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THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 



THE 



ETHICS OF THE DUST, 



®en Cecturcs 

TO 

LITTLE HOUSEWIVES 

ON 

THE ELEMENTS OF GRYSTALLISATION. 



BY 

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., 

HONO»6P<( STTTDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FIKE AB.1 



SEC ONI) EDITION. 

WITH NEW PUEPACE AND ADDED NOTE. 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN WILEY & SONS, 
15 ASTOR PLACK 

1886. 






^logical St.^«» 
DEC 8 1^2 



DEDICATION. 



The Real Little Housewives, 

WHOSE GENTLE LISTENING 

AND THOUGHTFUL QUESTIONING 

ENABLED THE WRITES TO WRITE THIS BOOK, 

IT IS DEDICATED 

WITH HIS LOVE. 



Christmas, 1875 



CONTENTS. 



LKcnjHa P^QE 

I. The Valley of Diamonds . . . . . « 13 

II. Tee Pyramid Builders . . . ' . . ol 

in. The Crystal Life -49 

IV. The Crystal Orders 69 

V. Crystal Virtues 91 

VI. Crystal Quarrels 115 

Vn. HoiiE Virtues . 137 

Vin. Crystal Caprice 165 

IX Crystal Sorrows , 187 

X. The Crystal Rest .211 

NOTBS . .24] 



PERSONS. 



Old Lecturer (of incalculable age). 

Flobrie, on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9. 

Isabel "11. 

May ..." 11. 

Lily , " 12. 

Kathleen "14, 

LUCILLA . . '* 15 

Violet '* 16. 

Dora (who has the keys and is hou,sekeeper) . " 17. 

Egypt (so called from her dark eyes) . . "17 
Jessie (who somehow always makes the room look 

brighter when she is in it) . . . . " 18. 
Maby (of whom everybody, including the Old 

Lecturer, is in great awe) . . . . "20, 



PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



I HAVE seldom been more disappointed by the result 
of my best pains given to any of my books, than by the 
earnest request of my publisher, after the opinion of 
the public had been taken on the ' Ethics of the Dust,' 
that I would "write no more in dialogue!" However, I 
bowed to public judgment in this matter at once, (know- 
ing also my inventive powers to be of the feeblest,) ; 
but in reprinting the book, (at tlie prevailing request of 
my kind friend, Mr. Henry Willett,) I would pray the 
readei-s whom it may at first offend by its disconnected 
method, to examine, nevertheless, with care, the passages 
in which the principal speaker sums the conclusions of 
any dialogue : for these summaries were written as in- 
troductions, for young people, to all that I have said on 
the same matters in my larger books ; and, on re-reading 
them, they satisfy me better, and seem to me calculated 
to be more generally useful, than anything else I have 
done of the kind. 

The summary of the contents of the whole book, 
beginning, " You may at least earnestly believe," at p 



& PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITIOJJT. 

219, is thus the clearest exposition I have ever yet given 
of the general conditions under which the Personal 
Creative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter ; 
and the analysis of heathen conceptions of Deity, begin- 
ning at p. 220, and closing at p. 232, not only prefaces, 
but very nearly supersedes, all that in more lengthy 
terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in * Aratra 
Pentelici,' and the ^ Queen of the Air.' 

And thus, however the book may fail in its intention 
of suggesting new occupations or interests to its younger 
readers, I think it worth reprinting, in the way I have 
also reprinted ' Unto this Last,' — page for page ; that the 
students of my more advanced works may be able to 
refer to these as the original documents of them ; of 
which the most essential in this book are these following. 

I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious 
functions of the Lower Pthah, p. 61, with his beetle- 
gospel, p. 65, " that a nation can stand on its vices better 
than on its virtues," explains the main motive of all my 
books on Political Economy. 

II. The examination of the connexion between stu- 
pidity and crime, pp. 93-101, Anticipated all that I have 
had to urge in Fors Clavigera against the commonly 
alleged excuse for public wickedness, — " They don't 
mean it — they don't know any better." 

III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, 
pp. 149 — 152, is a summary of what is afterwards devel- 
oped with utmost care in my inaugural lecture at Oxford 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XI 

on the relation of Art to Morals ; compare in that lec- 
ture, §§ 83-85, with the sentence in p. 151 of this book 
" I^othing is ever done so as really to please our Father 
unless we Avould also have done it, though we had had no 
Father to know of it." 

This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards 
only the general conditions of action in the children of 
God, in consequence of which it is foretold of them by 
Christ that they will say at the Judgment, " When saw 
we thee?" It does not refer to the distinct cases in 
which vh'tue consists in faith given to command, appear- 
ing to foolish human judgment inconsistent with the 
Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac ; nor to those in 
which any directly -given command requires nothing more 
of virtue than obedience. 

TV. The subsequent pages, 152-161, were written 
especially to check the dangerous impulses natural tc 
the minds of many amiable young wouien, in the direc- 
tion of narrow and selfish religious sentiment: and they 
contain, therefore, nearly eve]-ything which I believe it 
necessary that young people should be made to observe, 
respecting the errors of monastic life. But they in no- 
wise enter on the reverse, or favourable side : of which 
indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel myself able to 
speak with any decisiveness ; the evidence on that side, 
as stated in the text, having "never yet been dispassion- 
ately examined." 

V. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 101, is, tc 



Xii PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

my own fancy, the best bit of conversation in the book \ 
and the issue of it, at p. 109, the most practically and 
immediately useful. For on the idea of the inevitable 
weakness and corruption of human nature, lias logically 
followed, in our daily life, the horrible creed of modern 
" Social science," that all social action must be scientific- 
ally founded on vicious impulses. But on the habit of 
measuring and reverencing our powers and talents that 
we may kindly use them, will be founded a true Social 
science, developing, by the employment of them, all the 
real powers and honourable feelings of the race. 

YI. Finally, the account given in the second and third 
lectures, of the real nature and marvellousness of the 
laws of crystallization, is necessary to the understanding 
of what farther teaching of the beauty of inorganic 
form I may be able to give, either in 'Deucalion,' or in 
Hiy 'Elements of Drawing.' 1 wish however that the 
second lecture had been made the beginning of the book ; 
and would fain now cancel the first altogether, which 1 
perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meant for 
a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers 
in the kingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth ; its 
waters mixed with blood, its fruits entangled in thickets 
of trouble, and poisonous when gathered ; and the final 
captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls of cruelty 
and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffective 
throughout; and I retain this chapter only because I am 
resolved to leave no room for any one to say that X have 



PBEFAOE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XUl 

^dthdrawn, as erroneous in principle, so much as a single 
sentence of any of ray books written since 1860. 

One license taken in this book, however, though often 
permitted to essay-writers for the relief of their dulness, 
I never mean to take more, — the relation of composed 
metaphor as of actual dream, pp. 34: and 175. I assumed, 
it is true, that in these places the supposed dream would 
be easily seen to be an invention ; but must not any 
more, even under so transparent disguise, pretend to any 
share in the real powers of Vision possessed by sjreat 
poets and true painters. 

Bbantwood 

lOtli October, 1877. 



PREFACE 



The following lectures were really given, in substance, a1 
a girls' school (far in the country) ; which, in the course of 
various experiments on the possibility of introducing some 
better practice of drawing into the modern scheme of 
female education, I visited frequently enough to enable the 
children to regard me as a friend. The Lectures alwa^^s fell 
more or less into the form of fragmentary answers to ques- 
tions ; and they are allowed to retain that form, as, on the 
whole, likely to be more interesting than the symmetries 
of a continuous treatise. Many children (for the school 
was large) took part, at different times, in the con- 
versations; but I have endeavoured, without confusedly 
multiplying the number of imaginary^ speakers, to 

* I do not mean, in saying * imaginary,' that I have not permitted 
to myself, in several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of sorao 
reminiscence of personal character ; for which I must hope to bo for • 
given by my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise 



^^1 PEEPACE. 

represent, as far as I could, the general tone o± comment 
and enquiry among young people. 

It will be at once seen that these Lectures were not 
intended for an introduction to mineralogy. Their pur- 
pose was merely to awaken in the minds of young giils, 
who were ready to work earnestly and systematically, a 
vital interest in the subject of their study. No science can 
be learned in play ; but it is often possible, in play, to bring 
good fruit out of past labour, or show sufficient reasons for 
the labour of the future. 

The narrowness of this aim does not, indeed, justify the 
absence of all reference to many important principles of 
structure, and many of the most interesting orders of 
minerals; but I felt it impossible to go far into detail 
without illustrations ; and if readers find this book useful, 
I may, perhaps, endeavour to supplement it by illustrated 
notes of the more interesting phenomena in separate groups 
of familiar minerals; — flints of the chalk; — agates of the 
basalts ; — and the fantastic 'j-nd exquisitely beautiful vari 
eties of the vein-ores of the two commonest metals, lead 
and iron. But I have always found that the less we 
speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of oui 

have written the book at all But only two sentences in all the 
dialogues, and the anecdote of * Dotty,' are literally * historical* 



PREFACE. XVll 

realising them ; and this poor little book will sjiffi.iieutly 
have done its work, for the present, if it engages any 
of its young readers in study which may enable them 
to despise it for its shortcomings. 

Denmark Hill: 

Chria^nuu 1866 



The Ethics of the Dust. 



LECTURE I. 

TEE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

A very idle talk^ by the dining-room Jire^ after rat^iin-and 
almond time. 

Old Lecturer ; Florrie, Isabel, Mat, Lily, and Sibyl. 

Old Lectueer (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what 
the make-believe was, this afternoon. 

Isabel {arranging herself very primly on ike foot-stoot). 
Such a dreadful one ! Florrie and I were lost in the Valley 
of Diamonds. 

L. What ! Sindbad's, which nobody could get out of? 

Isabel. Yes ; but Florrie and I got out of it. 

L. So I see. At least, I see you did ; but are you sure 
Florrie did ? 

Isabel. Quite sure. 

Florrie {putting her head round from behind L.'s sofor 
*x{shion). Quite sure. {Disappears agai?i.) 

L. I think I could be made to feel surer about it. 

(Flokrie reappears, gives L. a kiss, and again exit.) 

L. I suppose it's all right ; but how did you manage it ? 

Isabel. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Smdbad 



14 THE VAJLLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

was very large— very, very large— the largest of all the 
eagles. 

]. How large were the others ? 

Isabel. I don't quite know — they were so far off. But 
this one was, oh, so big ! and it had great wings, as wide a? 
— twice over the ceiling. So, when it was picking up Sind 
bad, Florrie and I thought it wouldn't know if we got on its 
back too : so I got up first, and then I pulled up Florrie, and 
we put our arms round its neck, and away it flew. 

L. But why did you want to get out of the valley ? and 
wliy haven't you brought me some diamonds ? 

Isabel. It was because of the serpents. I couldn't pick 
up even the least little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened. 

L. You should not have minded the serpents. 

Isabel. Oh, but suppose that they had minded me ? 

L. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, I'm 
afraid. 

Isabel. No — no — no, indeed. 

L. I tell you what, Isabel — I don't believe either Sindbad, 
or Florrie, or you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds. 

Isadel. You naughty ! when I tell you we were! 

L. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents. 

Isabel. And wouldn't you have been ? 

L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into 
the valley is ever frightened at them — they are so beautiful. 



THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 16 

Isabel (suddenly serious). But there's no real Valley of 
Diamonds, is there ? 

L. Yes, Isabel ; very real indeed. 

Florkie {reappearing). Oh, where ? Tell me about it. 

L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it ; only I know It 
is very different from Sindbad's. In his valley, there was only 
a diamond lying here and there ; but, in the real valley, there 
are diamonds covering the grass in showers every morning, 
instead of dew: and there are clusters of trees, which look like 
lilac trees ; but, in spring, all their blossoms are of amethyst. 

Floerie. But there can't be any serpents there, then ? 

L. Why not ? 

Florrie. Because they don't come into such beautiful 
places. 

L. I never said it was a beautiful place. 

Florrie. What ! not with diamonds strewed about it like 
dew ? 

L. That's according to your fancy, Florrie. For myself, I 
like dew better. 

Isabel. Oh, but the dew won't stay; it all dries ! 

L. Yes; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried 
too, for the people in the valley have to sweep them off the 
grass, in heaps, whenever they Avant to walk on it ; and then 
the heaps glitter so, they hurt one's eyes. 

Flobrie. Now you're just playing, yon know. 



16 THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

L. So are you, you know. 

Floerie. Yes, but you mustn't play. 

L. That's very hard, Florrie ; why mustn't I, if you may ? 

Floerie. Oh, I may, because I'm little, but you mustn't, 
because you're — (hesitates for a delicate expression of 
magnitude), 

L. {rudely talcing the first that comes). Because I'm big? 
ISTo ; that's not the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you're 
little, you should have very little play ; and because I'm big 
I should have a great deal. 

Isabel and Florrie {both), No — no — no — ^no. That isn't 
it at all. (Is ABBL sola, quoting Miss Ingelow,) 'The lambs 
play always — they know no better.' {Putting her head very 
much on one side.) Ah, now — please — please — tell us true; 
we want to know. 

L. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more 
than the man who wrote the * Arabian Mghts ? ' 

Isabel. Because — ^because we like to know about real 
thmgs ; and you can tell us, and we can't ask the man who 
wrote the stories. 

L. What do you call real thmgs ? 

Isabel. Now, you know ! Things that really are. 

L. Whether you can see them or not ? 

Isabel. Yes, if somebody else saw them. 

L. But if nobody has ever seen them ? 



THE VALLEY OF DTAMONDS. 11 

Isabel (evading the point). Well, but, you know, if there 
were a real Yalley of Diamonds, somebody must have Been it. 

L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people 
go to real places, and never see them ; and many people 
pass through this valley, and never see it. 

Floerie. What stupid people they must be ! 

L. ^N'o, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people 
who do see it. 

May. I think I know where it is. 

Isabel. TeU us more about it, and then we'll guess. 

L. Well. There's a great broad road, by a river-side, 
leading up into it. 

May (gravel]/ cunni7ig, with emphasis on the last word)* 
Does the road really go up f 

L. You think it should go down into a valley ? No, it 
goes up ; this is a valley among the hills, and it is as high 
as the clouds, and is often full of them ; so that even the 
people who most want to see it, cannot, always. 

Isabel. And what is the river beside the road like ? 

L. It ought to be very beautiful, because it flows over 
liamond sand — only the water is thick and red. 

Isabel. Red water ? 

L. It isn't all water. 

May. Oh, please never mind that> Isabel, just now ; 1 
want to hear about the valley. 



rS THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock ; 
only such numbers of people are always trying to get in, 
that they keep jostling each other, and manage it but skuv 1\ 
Some weak ones are pushed back, and never get in at all ; 
and make great moaning as they go away : but perhaps they 
are none the worse in the end. 

Mat. And when one gets in, what is it like ? 

L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground : the road 
stops directly ; and there are great dark rocks, covered all 
over with wald gourds and wild vines ; the gourds, if you 
cut them, are red, with black seeds, like water-melons, and 
look ever so nice ; and the people of the place make a red 
pottage of them : but you must take care not to eat any if 
you ever want to leave the valley (though I believe putting 
plenty of meal in it makes it wholesome). Then the wild 
vines have clusters of the colour of amber ; and the people 
of the country say they are the grape of Eshcol ; and sweeter 
than honey : but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they 
are like gall. Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny 
that they w^ould be cut away directly, anywhere else ; but 
here they are covered with little cinque-foiled blossoms of 
pure silver ; and, for berries, they have clusters of rubies. 
Dark rubies, which you only see are red after gathering 
them. But you may fancy what blackberry parties the chil- 
dren liave ! Only they get their frocks and hands sadly torn, 



THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 19 

Lily. But rubies can't spot one's frocks, as blackberries do? 

L. No ; but I'll tell you what spots them — the mulberries. 
There are great forests of them, all up the hills, covered 
with silkworms, some munching the leaves so loud that it is 
like mills at work; and some spinning. But the berries 
are the blackest you ever saw ; and, wherever they fall, 
they stain a deep red ; and nothing ever washes it out 
again. And it is their juice, soaking through the grass, 
which makes the river so red, because all its springs are in 
this wood. And the boughs of the trees are twisted, as if 
in pain, like old olive branches; and their leaves are dark. 
And it is in these forests that the serpents are ; but nobody is 
afraid of them. They have fine crimson crests, and they are 
wreathed about the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; 
and they are singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this 
forest, vvhat birds are in ours. 

Floreie. Oh, I don't want to go there at all, now. 

L. You would like it very much indeed, Florrie, if you 
were there. The serpents would not bite yon ; the only fear 
would be of your turning into one ! 

FloFwIiie. Oh, dear, but that's worbe. 

}j. You wouldn't think so if you really were turned into 
one, Flonie ; you would be very proud of your crest. And 
as Jong as you were yourself (not thaji you could get there if 
yon remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would 



20 THE VAIJ.EY OF DIAMONDS. 

like to bear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it^ 
like the cicadas in Italy ; but they keep good time, and sing 
delightful melodies ; and most of them have seven headsi 
with throats which each take a note of the octave ; so that 
tlioy can sing chords — it is very fine indeed. And the fire- 
flies fly round the edge of the forests all the night long; you 
wade in fireflies, they make the fields look like a lake trem- 
bling with reflection of stars ; but you must take care not to 
touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies, but burn, 
like real sparks. 

Floerie. I don't like it at all ; I'll never go there. 

L. I hope not, Florrie ; or at least that you will get out 
again if you do. And it is very diflScult to get out, for beyond 
these serpent forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which 
form a labyrinth, winding always higher and higher, till the 
gold is all split asunder by wedges of ice; and glaciers, 
welded, half of ice seven times frozen, and half of gold seven 
times frozen, hang down from them, and fall in thunder, 
cleaving into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads ; 
and into a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet 
which the mountain whirlwinds are able to lift and drive in 
wreaths and pillars, hiding the paths with a burial cloud, 
fatal at once with wintry chill, and weight of golden ashes. 
So the wanderers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and are 
buried there : — yet, over the drifted graves, those who are 



THE VALLEY OP DIAMONDS. 21 

spared climb to the last, through coil on coil of the path ;— 
for at the end of it they see the king of the valley, sitting oc 
his throne: and beside him (but it is only a false vision), 
spectra of creatures like themselves, set on thrones, from 
which they seem to look down on all the kingdoms of the 
world, and the glory of them. And on the canopy of his 
throne there is an inscription in fiery letters, which they 
strive to read, but cannot ; for it is written in words which 
are like the words of all languages, and yet are of none. Men 
say it is more like their own tongue to the English than it is 
to any other nation ; but the only record of it is by an Italian, 
who heard the king himself cry it as a war cry, ' Pape Satan, 
Pape Satan Aleppe.' * 

Slbyl. But do they all perish there ? You said there was 
a way through the valley, and out of it. 

L. Yes ; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass 
paths, where the diamonds are swept aside ; and hold their 
hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths 
lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little 
opening in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last 
year, Sibyl ; did your guide chance to show you the pierced 
rock of the Aiguille du Midi ? 

Sibyl. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Men 

♦ Dante. Inf. 1. 1. 



22 THE VAIXET OF DIAMONDS. 

day night; and it rained all Tuesday ; and we had to be back 
at Geneva again, early on Wednesday morning. 

L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a 
Sibylline manner, by inner consciousness : but you might have 
Been the pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds 
broke : not that there is much to see in it ; one of the crags 
of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck 
sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole ; which 
you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the 
clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and 
then dark blue. Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one 
of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a dis- 
tance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. 
But if you get up to it, they say you may drive a loaded camel 
through it, and that there are fine things on the other side, 
but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through. 

Sibyl. I think we understand it now. We will try to 
write it down, and think of it. 

L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling 
you is very true, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds 
that people wear in rings and necklaces are found lying 
about on the grass. Would you like to see how they reallj 
B"G found ? 

Florrte. Oh, yes — yes. 

L. Isabel — or Lily — run up to my room and fetch me the 



THE VAI^LET OF DIAilOXDS. 23 

little box with a glass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest 
of drawers. {Race between Lily and Isabel.) 

{He-enter Isabel with the hox^ very much out of breath 
Lily behind.) 

L. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stan-s, 
can yoii, Isabel? 

Isabel (panting), Lily — beat me — ever so far — but she 
gave me — the box — to carry in. 

L. Take off the lid, then ; gently. 

Ylourie (after peepi7ig 171, disappointed). There's only a 
great ugly brown stone ! 

L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people 
were Avise. But look, it is not a single stone ; but a knot of 
pebbles fastened together by gravel ; and in the gravel, oi' 
compressed sand, if you look close, you will see grains of 
gold glittering everywhere, all through ; and then, do you 
see these two \\'hite beads, which shine, as if they had been 
covered with grease ? 

Florrie. May I touch them ? 

L. Yes ; you will find they are not greasy, only very 
.smooth. Well, those are the fatal jewels; native here in 
their dust with gold, so that you may see, cradled here 
together, the two great enemies of mankind, — the strongest 
of all malignant physical powers that have tormented oui 
race. 



24 THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

Sibyl. Is that really so ? I know they do great harm ; bm 
do they not also do great good ? 

L. My dear child, what good ? Was any woman, do you 
fliippose, ever the butter for possessing diamonds ? but how 
nany have been made base, frivolous, and miserable by desir- 
ing them ? Was ever man the better for having coffers full 
of gold ? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred 
to fill them ? Look into the history of any civilised nations ; 
analyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, 
the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, 
and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last 
concentrated into this ; pride, and lust, and envy, and anger 
all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole 
world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve 
their Christ; but they sell Him. 

Sibyl. But surely that is the fault of human nature? 
it is not caused by the accident, as it were, of there being 
a pretty metal, like gold, to be found by digging. If people 
could not find that, would they not find something else, and 
quarrel for it instead ? 

L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, 
for a time, jewels and precious metals from among national 
possessions, the national spirit has remained healthy. Cove 
tousness is not natural to man — generosity is ; but covetous- 
ness must be excited by a special cause, as a given disease 



THE VALLET OF DIAMONDS. 25 

by a given miasma ; and the essential nature of a material 
for the excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a beau- 
tiful thing which can be retained without a use. The moment 
we can use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, 
the inslinct of communicating that use to others rises side 
by side with our power. If you can read a book rightly, 
you will want others to hear it ; if you can enjoy a picture 
rightly, you w^ill want others to see it : learn how to manage 
a horse, a plough, or a ship, and you will desire to make 
your subordinates good horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors ; 
you will never be able to see the fine instrument you are 
master of, abased ; but, once fix your desire on anything 
useless, and all the purest pride and folly in your heart will 
mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly inhuman, 
a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish. 

Sibyl. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and 
diamonds, must have been appointed to some good purpose ? 

L. Quite conceivably so, my dear : as also earthquakes 
and pestilences ; but of such ultimate purposes we can have 
no sight. The practical, immediate ofhce of the earthquake 
And pestilence is to slay us, like moths ; and, as moths, we 
shall be wise to live out of their way. So, the practical, 
immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied de- 
struction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught 

to imderstand that phrase) ; and the paralysis of wholesome 

2 



26 THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

human effort and thought on the face of God's earth : and a 
wise nation will live out of the way of them. The money 
whicli the English habitually spend in cutting diamonds 
would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocks in 
stead, leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbour round 
the whole island coast. Great Britain would be a diamond 
worth cutting, indeed, a true piece of regalia. {JLeaves thu 
to their thoughts for a little while.) Then, also, we poor 
mineralogists might sometimes have the chance of seeing a 
fine crystal of diamond unbacked by the jeweller. 

Sibyl. Would it be more beautiful uncut ? 

L. No ; but of infinite interest. We might even come to 
know something about the making of diamonds. 

Sibyl. I thought the chemists could make them already? 

L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows 
how they are formed where they are found ; or if indeed 
they are formed there at all. These, in my hand, look as if 
they had been swept down with the gravel and gold; only 
we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but 
not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond 
in any good work on mineralogy ; — you will find nothing but 
lists of localities of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is 
only an old indurated gravel). Some say it was once a vege- 
table gum ; but it may have been charred wood ; but what 
one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should mike 



THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 2l 

Ltself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead ir 
Borrowdale. 

Sibyl. Are they wholly the same, then ? 

L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but 
nothing to hinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fa .t aro 
all pointed with formless diamond, though they woi-ld be 
H H H pencils to purpose, if it crystallised. 

Sibyl. But what is crystallisation ? 

L. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has 
been tea time these two hours. What thoughtless things 
girls are ! 

Sibyl. Yes, we are ; but we want to know, for all that. 

L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you. 

Sibyl. Well, take it, and tell us. 

L. But nobody knows anything about it. 

Sibyl. Then tell us something that nobody knows. 

L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea. 

(The house rises ; but of course the Lecturer icanted 
to be forced to lecture again, and was.) 



Cecturc 2. 
TRE PYRAMID BUILDEB8. 



LECTURE n. 

THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 

In the large Schoolroom^ to which everybody has been 
summoned by ringing of the great bell. 

L. So you have all actually coDie to hear about crystallisa- 

lion ! I cannot conceive wiiy, unless the little ones think that 

the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy. 

{Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger 

members of council. Isabel frowns severely at L., 

and shciTces her head violently.) 

My dear children, if yon knew it, yon are yourselves, at 
this moment, as yon sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye 
of a mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, 
arranged by atomic forces. And even admitting you to be 
something more, you have certainly been crystallising with- 
out knowing it. Did not I hear a great hurrying and whis- 
pering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the 
playground ; and thought you would not all be quietly seated 
by the time I was ready : — besides some discussion about 
places — something about Mt's not being fair that the little 
ones should always be nearest?' Well, you were then all 



32 THE P YEA MID BFLLDEES. 

being crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and 
against one another in the passages, you were in what 
mineralogists would call a state of solution, and gradual 
confluence; when you got seated in those orderly rows, 
each in her proper place, you became crystalline. That ia 
just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can, whenever 
they get disordered : they get into order again as soon as 
may be. 

I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, ' But we 
know our places; how do the atoms know theirs? And 
«5ometimes we dispute about our places ; do the atoms — (and, 
besides, Ave don't like being compared to atoms at all) — 
never dispute about theirs?' Two wise questions these, if 
you had a mind to put them ! it was long before I asked 
them myself, of myself. And I will not call you atoms any 
more. May I call you — let me see — ' primary molecules ?' 
{ General dissent indicated in subdued hut decisive murmurs.) 
Xo ! not even, in familiar Saxon, ' dust?' 

(Pause, with expressio?i on faces of sorrowful doubt y 
Lilt gives voice to the general sentimeixt in a timid 
''Please don't:) 

No, children, I won't call you that ; and mind, as you 
grow up, that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit 
of calling yourselves that. You are something better than 
dust, and have other duties to do than ever dust can do; 



THE PYRA^nD BUTLDEBS. 33 

and the bonds of affection you will enter iiitD are better \fian 
merely 'getting into order/ But see to it, on the other 
hand, that you always behave at least as well as 'dust;' 
remember, it is only on compulsion, and while it has nc free 
permission to do as it likes, that it ever gets out of order- 
but sometimes, with some of ns, the compulsion has to be 
the other way — hasn't it ? {Hemonstratory whispers^ expres- 
sive of opinion that the Lecturer is becoming too personal.) 
I'm not looking at anybody in particular — indeed I am not. 
Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking ? 
We'll go back to the atoms. 

' How do they know their places ?' you asked, or should 
have asked. Yes, and they have to do much more than know 
them : they have to find their way to them, and that quietly 
and at once, without running against each other. 

We may, indeed, state it briefly thus : — Suppose you have 

to build a castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out 

of bricks of a given shape, and that these bricks are all lying 

in a huge heap at the bottom, in utter confusion, upset out 

of carts at random. You would have to draw a great many 

plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had enougl 

for this and that tower, before you began, and then you 

would have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in 

order, slowly. 

But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy 

2* 



34 THE PYRAMID BTHLDEBS. 

days, when children don't read children's bjoks, nor beheve 
any more in fairies, if snddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a 
bright brick-red gown, >\ere to rise in the midst of the red 
bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say 
' Bricks, bricks, to yom- places ! ' and then you saw in an 
instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red 
bees, and — you have been used to see bees make a honey- 
comb, and to think that strange enough, but now you woula 
see the honeycomb make itself! — You want to ask something, 
Florrie, by the look of your eyes. 

Floeeie. Are they turned into real bees, with stings ? 

L. No, Florrie ; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you 
saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the 
storm; only those slates didn't seem to know where they 
were going, and, besides, were going where they had no 
business : but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no 
wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find 
their way in the air just where they should settle, inli 
fxjwers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there 
at tlie right moment, so that every other one shall fit to him 
in his t urn. 

Lily. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crys 
tals? 

L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more 
than crystals ; but she builds these also. I dreamed that J 



THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 35 

saw ner building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do, 
for the Pharaohs. 

Isabel. But that was only a dream ? 

L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel ; but 
1 won't tell it you unless you like. 

Isabel. Oh, please, please. 

L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to 
you ; you won't believe anything. 

Lily. ISTo, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, 
when you say we ought. 

L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect 
that evening when we had been looking at your old cave by 
Cumse, and wondering why you didn't live there still : and 
then we wondered how old you were ; and Egypt said you 
wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she ; and you 
laughed — ^l thought very gaily for a Sibyl — and said yon 
would harness a flock of cranes for us, and we miglit fly over 
to Egypt if we liked, and see. 

Sibyl. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all ! 

L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that 

third pyramid of hers;* and making a new entrance into it 

*and a tine entrance it was ! First, we had to go through an 

ante-room, which had both its doors blocked up with stones ; 

and then we had three granite portcullises to pull u]), one 

* Note L 



36 THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 

after another; and the moment we had got mider them, 
Egypt signed to somebody above ; and down they came 
again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only louder ; then 
we got into a passage fit for nobody but rats, and Egypt 
wouldn't go any further herself, but said we might go on if 
we liked ; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and 
then to a granite trap-door — and then we thought we had 
gone quite far enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at 
us. 

Egypt. You would not have had me take my crown off, 
and stoop all the way down a passage fit only for rats? 

L. It was not the crown, Egypt — you know that very well. 
It was the flounces that would not let you go any farther. I 
suppose, however, you wear them as typical of the inunda- 
tion of the Nile, so it is all right. 

IsAPEL. Why didn't you take me with you ? Where rats 
can go, mice can. I wouldn't have come back. 

L. No, mousie ; you would have gone on by yourself, 
and you might have waked one of Pasht's cats,* and it 
would have eaten you. I was very glad you were not there. 
But after all this, I suppose the imagination of the heavy 
granite blocks and the underground ways had troubled me, 
and dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the 
impressions that have caused them ; and from all that w« 

* Note iii 



THE PYEAMID BUILDERS. 37 

had been reading in Bunsen about stones tbat couldn't be 
lifted with levers, I began to dream about stones that lifted 
themselves with wings. 

Sibyl. ]^ow you must just tell us all about it. 

L, I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of 
whose clay the bricks were made for the great pyramid of 
Asychis.* They had just been all finished, and were lying 
by the lake margin, in long ridges, like waves. It was near 
evening ; and as I looked towards the sunset, I saw a thing 
like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert 
stoops to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar 
there, and wondered at it ; and it grew larger, and glided 
nearer, becoming like the form of a man, but vast, and it did 
not move its feet, but glided, like a pillar of sand. And as 
it drew nearer, I looked by chance past it, towards the sun ; 
and saw a silver cloud, which was of all the clouds closest to 
the sun (and in one place crossed it), draw itself back from 
the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the 
dark pillar ; leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. 
And I thought it was lightning ; but when it came near the 
shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down beside it, and changed 
into the shape of a woman, very beautiful, and with a 
strength of deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to 
the feet with a white robe ; and above that, to her kneea, 

* Note iL 



38 THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 

by the cloud which I had seen across the sun ; but all the 
golden ripples of it had become plumes, so that it had 
changed into two bright wings like those of a vulture, which 
wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's shut- 
tle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her 
left hand, arrows, tipped with fire. 

Isabel (dapping her hands). Oh ! it was !N"eith, it was 
Neith ! I know now. 

L. Yes ; it was iTeith herself; and as the two great spirits 
came nearer to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister 
— the pillared shadow was the Greater Pthah.'* And I heard 
them speak, and the sound of their words was hke a distant 
singing. I could not understand the words one by one ; yet 
their sense came to me ; and so I knew that Neith had come 
down to see her brother's work, and the work that he had 
put into the mind of the king to make his servants do. And 
she was displeased at it ; because she saw only pieces of dark 
clay ; and no porphyry, nor marble, nor any fair stone that 
men might engrave the figures of the gods upon. And she 
blamed her brother, and said, ' Oh, Lord of truth ! is this 
then thy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces 
of clay : and the forms of the gods no more V Then the 
Lord of truth sighed, and said, ' Oh ! sister, in truth they do 
not love us ; why should they set up our images ? Let them 

* Note iil 



THE PYRAMID BUILDEES. 39 

do what they may, and not lie — let them make their clay 
four-square ; and labour ; and perish.' 

Then Keith's dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, 
' Oh, Lord of truth! why should they love us? their love is 
vain ; or fear us ? for their fear is base. Yet let them testiff' 
of us, that they knew we lived for ever.' 

But the Lord of truth answered, 'They know, and yet they 
know not. Let them keep silence ; for their silence only is 
truth.' 

Bat ISTeith answered, ' Brother, wilt thou also make 
league with Death, because Death is true ? Oh ! thou 
potter, who hast cast these human things from thy wheel, 
many to dishonour, and few to honour; wilt thou not 
let them so much as see my face ; but slay them in 
slavery V 

But Pthah only answered, ' Let them build, sister, let them 
build.' 

And Neith answered, 'What shall they build, if I build not 
with them ?' 

And Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand. 
And I saw suddenly, drawn on the sand, the outlines of great 
'iities, and of vaults, and domes, and aqueducts, and bastions, 
and towers, greater than obelisks, covered with black clouds. 
And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the lines that 
Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of 



40 THE PYRAMID BUILDEES. 

men. But I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, 
they faded, and were effaced. 

' Oh, Brother !' she said at last, ' what is this v^anity ? If !» 
who am Lady of wisdom, do not mock the clildren of men, 
why shouldst thou mock them, who art Lord of truth?' But 
Pthah answered, ' They thought to bind me ; and they shall 
be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity.' 

And ISTeith said, looking at the sand, ' Brother, there is no 
true labour here — there is only weary life and wasteful death.' 

And Pthah answered, ' Is it not truer labour, sister, than 
thy sculpture of dreams ?' 

Then ISTeith smiled ; and stopped suddenly 

She looked to the sun ; its edge touched the horizon-edge 
of the desert. Then she looked to the long heaps of pieces 
of clay, that lay, each with its blue shadow, by the lake shore. 

' Brother,' she said, ' how long will this pyramid of thine 
be in building ? ' 

' Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, 
before the summit is laid.' 

* Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to 
labour,' answered !N"eith. 'Look! I must follow Phre beyond 
Atlas; shall I build your pyramid for you before he goes 
down ?' And Pthah answered^ 'Yea, sister, if thou canst put 
thy winged shoulders to such work.' And Neith drew her- 
self to her height ; and I heard a clashing pass through the 



THE PTEAMTD BUILBEES. 4 1 

pliirnes of lier wings, and the asp stood up on hei belinel, 
and fire gathered in her eyes. And she took one of the 
flaming arrows out of the sheaf in her left hand, and 
stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And they rose up 
like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air, so that 
il grew dark in a moment. Then Xeith designed them 
places with her arrow point ; and they drew into ranks, like 
dark clouds laid level at morning. Tlien Xeith pointed with 
her arrow to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and 
to the west, and the flying motes of earth drew asunder into 
four great ranked crowds; and stood, one in the north, and 
one in the south, and one in the east, and one in the west — 
one against another. Then Xeith spread her wings wide for 
an instant, and closed them with a sound like the sound of 
a rushing sea ; and waved her hand towards the foundation 
of the pyramid, where it was laid on the brow of the desert. 
And the four flocks drew together and sank d^wn, like sea- 
birds settling to a level rock ; and when they met, there was 
a sudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and as high as the 
clouds; and it dazzled me; and I closed my eyes for an 
instant; and when I looked again, the pyramid stood on its 
rock, perfect ; and purple with the light from the edge of the 
filnking sim. 

The youxgee Children {variously/ pleased). Pm so 
glad ! How^ nice ! But what did Pthah say? 



42 THE PYEAMID BUILDERS. 

L. Xeith did not wait to hear what he would say. When 
I turned back to look at her, she was gone ; and I only sa\v 
the level white cloud form itself again, close to the arch of 
the sun as it sank. And as the last edge of the sun di? 
appeared, the form of Pthah faded into a mighty shadow, 
and so passed away. 

Egypt. And was Neith's pyi^amid left ? 

L. Yes ; but you could not think, Egypt, what a strange 
feeling of utter loneliness came over me when the presence 
of the two gods passed away. It seemed as if I had never 
known what it was to be alone before ; and the unbroken 
line of the desert was terrible. 

Egypt. I used to feel that, when I was queen ; sometimea 
I had to carve gods, for company, all over my palace. I 
would fain have seen real ones, if I could. 

L. But listen a moment yet, for that was not quite all my 
dream. The twilight drew swiftly to the dark, and I could 
hardly see the great pyramid; when there came a heavy 
murmuring sound in the air ; and a horned beetle, with ter- 
rible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a blow like the 
beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and 
waved its pincers at me : and its fore claws became strong 
arms, and hands; one graspmg real iron pincers, and the 
other a huge hammer; and it had a helmet on its head, with 
out any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its two hind 



THE PTEAMID BUILDEES. 43 

claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent inwards. 
And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour, 
ribbed and embossed like a beetle's back, leaning on his ham- 
mer. And I could not speak for wonder ; but he spoke with 
a murmur like the dying away of a beat upon a bell. He 
said, ' I will make ISTeith's great pyi-amid small. I am the 
lower Pthah; and have power over fire. I can wither the 
strong things, and strengthen the weak ; and everything that 
is great I can make small, and everything that is little I can 
make great.' Then he turned to the angle of the pyramid 
and limped towards it. And the pyramid grew deep purple ; 
and then red like blood, and then pale rose-colour, like fire. 
And I saw that it glowed with fire from within. And the 
lower Pthah touched it with the hand that held the pincers ; 
and it sank down like the sand in an hour-glass, — then drew 
itself together, and sank, still, and became nothing, it seemed 
to me ; but the armed dwarf stooped down, and took it into 
his hand, and brought it to me, saying, ' Everything that is 
great I can make like this pyramid; and give into men's 
Lands to destroy.' And I saw that he had a little pyramid 
in his hand, with as many courses in it as the large one ; and 
built like that, — only so small. And because it glowed still, 
I was afraid to touch it ; but Pthah said, ' Touch it — for 1 
have bound the fire within it, so that it cannot burn.' So I 
touched it, and took it into my own hand; and it was cold; 



44 THE PTEAMID BUILDERS. 

only red, like a ruby. And Pthah laughed, and became like a 
beetle again, and buried himself in the sand, fiercely; throw- 
ing it back over his shoulders. And it seemed to me as if 
he would draw me down with him into the sand; and 1 
started back, and woke, holding the little pyramid so fast in 
my hand that it hurt me. 

Egypt. Holding what in your hand ? 

L. The Httle pyramid. 

Egypt. Keith's pyramid ? 

L. Neith's, I believe ; though not built for Asychis. I 
know only that it is a little rosy transparent pyramid, built 
of more courses of bricks than I can count, it being made so 
small. You don't believe me, of course, Egyptian infidel ; 
but there it is. {Giving crystal of rose Fluor.) 

{Confused examination by crowded audience^ over each 
other'' s shoulders and under each other'' s arms. Disappoint- 
ment begins to manifest itself) 

Sibyl {not quite knowing why she and others are disap* 
pointed). But you showed us this the other day! 

L. Yes ; but you would not look at it the other day. 

Sibyl. But was all that fine dream only about this? 

L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this *f 
It is small, if you will ; but when you begin to think of thinga 
rightly, the ideas of smalhiess and largeness pass away. The 
making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful ae 



THE TYRAMID BTJILDERS. 4^5 

<,lie dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehen- 
eible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand 
things are done as swiftly. When ISTeith makes crystals of 
snow, it needs a great deal more marshalling of the atoms, 
by her flaming arrows, than it does to make crystals like this 
one ; and that is done in a moment. 

Egypt. But how you do puzzle us ! Why do you say !N'eith 
does it^ You don't mean that she is a real spirit, do 
you? 

L. What I mean, is of little consequence. What the 
Egyptians meant, who called her * Neith,' — or Homer, who 
called her 'Athena,' — or Solomon, who called her by a word 
which the Greeks render as 'Sophia,' you must judge for 
yourselves. But her testimony is always the same, and all 
nations have received it : 'I was by Him as one brought up 
with Him, and I was daily His delight ; rejoicing in the 
habitable parts of the earth, and my delights were \vith the 
sons of men.' 

Mart. But is not that only a personification ? 
L. K it be, what will you gain by unpersoniiying it, or 
what right have you to do so? Cannot you accept the image 
given you, in its life ; and listen, like children, to the 
words which chiefly belong to you as children : * I love 
them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find 
me?' 



46 THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 

[They are aU quiet for a minute or two; questions hegm 
to appear in their eyes.) 

I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose- 
crystal away witb you, and think. 



Cectuve 3. 
THE CBYSTAL LIIM 



LECTURE m. 

TEE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

A very dull Lecture., wilfully brought upon themselves by the 
elder children. Some of the young ones have., however^ 
managed to get in hy mistake. Scene, the Schoolroom, 

L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, 
to-day, Miss Mary, am I ? 

Mart. Yes, and you must answer them plainly; without 
telling us any more stories. You are quite spoiling tho 
children : the poor little things' heads are turning round like 
kaleidoscopes ; and they don't know in the least what you 
mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter : to-day 
you must really tell us nothing but facts. 

L. I am sworn ; but you won't Hke it, a bit. 

Mart. Now, first of all, what do you mean by ' bricks V 
— Are the smallest particles of minerals all of some accurate 
shape, like bricks ? 

L. I do not know. Miss Mary ; I do not even know if an^- 
!)ody knows. The smallest atoms which are visibly and prac- 
tically put together to make large crystals, may better be 
described as ' limited in fijsed directions ' than as ' of fixed 



60 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

forms.' But I can tell you nothing clear about ultimate 
atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of 
little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put 
it to. 

Mary. Well, it's very provoking ; one seems always to be 
stopped just when one is coming to tlje very thing one wants 
to know. 

L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything 
but what is easily and assuredly knowable. There's no end 
to it. If I could show you, or myself, a group of ultimate 
atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying glass, we should both 
be presently vexed because we could not break them in two 
pieces, and see their insides. 

Mary. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying 
of the bricks? What is it the atoms do, that is like 
flying? 

L. When they are dissolved, or micrystallised, they are 
really separated from each othei-, Mke a swarm of gnats in 
the air, or like a shoal of fish in the sea ; — generally at about 
equal distances. In currents of solutions, or at different 
depths of them, one part may be more full of the dissolved 
atoms than another ; but on the whole, you may think of 
them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. 
If they are separated by force of heat only, the substance is 
said to be melted ; if they are separated by any other sub- 



THE CKYSTAL LIPE. 61 

Stance, as particles of sugar by ^Yater, they are said to De 
' dissolved.' !N"ote this distinction carefully, all of you. 

Dora. I will be very particular. When next you tell ma 
there isn't sugar enough in your tea, I will say, ' It is not yet 
dissolved, sir.' 

L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and 
that's the present parliament, if the members get too saucy. 

(Doha folds her harids and casts down her eyes,) 

L. (proceeds in state). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, 
I believe, that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient 
heat, like wax. Limestone melts (under pressure) ; sand 
melts ; granite melts ; the lava of a volcano is a mixed mass 
of many kinds of rocks, melted : and any melted substance 
nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools ; the more 
slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the 
freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conve- 
niently, call the melting, point ; and radiates as it cools into 
the most beautiful of all known crystals. Glass melts at a 
greater heat, and will crystallise, if you let it cool slowly 
enough, in stars, much like snow. Gold needs more heat to 
melt it, but crystallises also exquisitely, as I will presently 
show you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallise from their va- 
pours. ISTow in any of these cases, either of melted, dis- 
solved, or vajDorous bodies, the particles are usually separated 
from each other, either by heat, or by an intermediate sub- 



62 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

Stance ; and in crystallising they are both brought nearer to 
each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible : 
the essential part of the business being not the bringing 
tx)gether, but the packing. Who packed your trunk for you, 
last holidays, Isabel ? 

Isabel. Lily does, always. 

L. And how much can you allow for Lily's good packing, 
in guessing what will go into the trunk ? 

Isabel. Oh ! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. 
Lily always gets everything in. 

Lilt. Ah ! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it 
takes ! and since you've had those great hard buttons on 
your frocks, I can't do anything with them. Buttons won't 
go anywhere, you know. 

L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a 
tvime it takes ; and I wish any of us knew what a time crys- 
l^allisation takes, for that is consummately fine packing. The 
particles of the rock are thrown down, just as Isabel brings 
her things — in a heap ; and innumerable Lilies, not of the 
valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes 
guch a time ! 

However, the best — out and out the best — way of under- 
standing the thing, is to crystallise yourselves. 

The Audience. Ourselves ! 

L. Yes ; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly^ 



THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 53 

on the schoolroom forms ; but carefully and finely, cut in the 
playground. You can play at crystallisation there as much 
as you please. 

Kathleen and Jessie. Oh ! how ? — how ? 

L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as yon 
■an, in the middle of the grass, and form, for first practice, 
any figure you like. 

Jessie. Any dancing figm-e, do you mean ? 

L. jS'o ; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any 
figure you like, standing close together. You had better 
outline it first on the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to 
see that it is rightly drawn ; then get into it and enlarge or 
diminish it at one side, till you are all quite in it, and no 
empty space left. 

Dora. Crinoline and all ? 

L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystal- 
line surface, unless you pin it in ; and then you may make a 
polished crystal of yourselves. 

Lilt. Oh, we'll pin it in — we'll pin it in ! 

L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note 
her place, and who is next her on each side ; and let the out 
aiders count how many places they stand from the corners. 

Kathleen-. Yes, yes, — and then ? 

L. Then you must scatter all over the playground — right 
over it from side to side, and end to end • and put yourselves 



54 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

all at equal distances from each other, everywhere. You 
needn't mind doing it very accurately, but so as to be nearly 
equidistant ; not less than about three yards apart from each 
other, on every side. 

Jessie. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, 
to hold. And then ? 

L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the 
same rate, towards the outlined figure in the middle. You 
had better sing as you walk ; that will keep you in good 
Hme. And as you close in towards it, let each take her 
place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside the first 
ones, till you are all in the figure again. 

Kathleen. Oh ! how we shall run against each other ! 
What fun it will be ! 

L. Ko, no. Miss Katie ; I can't allow any running agamst 
each other. The atoms never do that, whatever human crea- 
tures do. You must all know your places, and find your way 
to them without jostling. 

Lilt. But how ever shall we do that ? 

Isabel. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and 
tlie outside ones farther oflT— when we go away to scatter, I 
mean ? 

L. Yes ; you must be very careful to keep your order ; 
you will soon find out how to do it ; it is only like soldiers 
forming square, except that each must stand still in her place 



THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 55 

as she reaches it, and the others come round her ; and you 
will have much more complicated figures, afterwards, to 
form, than squares. 

Isabel. I'll put a stone at my place : then I shall know 
it 

L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your 
place, with your name upon it : but it would be of no usa 
for if you don't know your places, you will make a fine piece 
of business of it, while you are looking for your names. 
And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes, and a brain (all 
of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as such 
things go), you think you cannot know your place without a 
stone at it, after examining it well, — how do you think each 
atom knows its place, when it never was there before, and 
there's no stone at it ? 

Isabel. But does every atom know its place ? 

L. How else could it get there ? 

Mart. Are they not attracted into their places ? 

L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals ; 
and then imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any 
law of attraction, to exist between the spots, and try how, 
on that permitted supposition, you can attract them into the 
6gure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of the paper. 

Mary [having tried it). Yes; I see that I cannot: — one 
would need all kinds of attractions, in different ways, at 



56 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

different places. But you do not mean that the atoms are 

alive ? 

L. What is it to be alive ? 

Dora. There now ;• you're going to be provoking, I know. 

L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked 
what it is to be alive. Do you think you don't know whether 
you are alive or not ? 

(Isabel sJciiys to the end of the room and back.) 

L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine ; and you and I may call 
that being alive : but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 
' mode of motion.' It requires a certain quantity of heat to 
take you to the sideboard ; and exactly the same quantity to 
bring you back again. That's all. 

Isabel. I^o, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot. 

L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you 
know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, 
and yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, 
by chemical forces, in the liveliest way. 

Isabel. Yes ; but I wasn't carried : I carried myself. 

L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to 
say what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As 
soon as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a 
Self, you begin to be alive. 

Violet {indignant). Oh, surely — surely that cannot be so. 
Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation ? 



THE CRYSTAIi LIFE. 07 

L, There can be no communion where there is no distiac 
tion. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, 
if we don't look out ; and besides, we must not be too grand, 
to-day, for the younger children. We'll be grand, some day, 
by ourselves, if we must. (Tlie younger children are no' 
pleased^ and prepare to remonstrate y hut^ knowing by expe^ 
rience, that all conversations in which the icord ' communion' 
occurs^ are uninteUigible^ think better of it.) JMeantime, for 
broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should 
use the word ' life,' of any energy which does not belong to a 
given form. A seed, or an egg^ or a young animal, are pro- 
perly called 'alive' with resj)ect to the force belonging to 
those forms, which consistently developes that form, and no 
other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears 
to be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely 
di^terminate and individual form, limited in size, but only an 
aggregation, in which some limitiug laws must be observed. 

Mauy. But I do not see much difference, that way, 
betw-^en a crystal and a tree. 

L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living 

thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a 

period for its end. So you may define life by its attached 

negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, 

birth. But I won't be plagued any more about thia, just 

now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and 

3* 



58 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

^ welcome. Rocks have always been called 'living' in theu 
native place. 

Mary. There's one question more; tlen I've done. 

L. Only one ? 

Mary. Only one. 

L. But if it is answei-ed, won't it turn into two ? 

Mary, ^o ; I think it will remain single, and be comfort- 
able. 

L. Let me hear it. 

Mary. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of 
the whole playground. Now, what playground have the 
minerals? Where are they scattered before they are 
crystallised ; and where are the crystals generally made ? 

L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, 
Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one. 

Mary. I did not say anything about the width of it, 

L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. 
When rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a 
heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk ; and cracks, or 
open spaces, form in them in all directions. These cracks 
must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would even- 
tually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, 
gometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystal- 
Usable matter is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself 
in these open spaces, so as to bind the rock together again 



THE CEYSTAL LIFE. 69 

with crystal cement. A vast quantity of hollows are formed 
in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread 
well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally 
filled with various crystals. 

Mary. But where does the crystallising substance coma 
from ? 

L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below 
or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the 
contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so 
as to fill every pore ; — or with mineral vapour ; — or it may 
be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There's 
DO end to the 'may he's.' Bat all that you need fancy, for 
our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like thr. 
caves in Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour con- 
taining certain elements in a more or less free or separate 
state, which crystallise on the cave walls. 

Sibyl. There now; — Mary has had all her questions an- 
swered : it's my turn to have mine. 

L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might 
have guessed as much. 

DoKA. I'm sure you ask us questions enough ! How can 
you have the heart, when you dislike so to be asked them 
yourself? 

L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it 
does not matter how many they are asked, because they've 



60 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

00 trouble witli them. Now, when I ask you questions, 1 
never expect to be answered ; but when you ask me, you 
always do ; and it's not fair. 

Dora. Very well, we shall understand, next time. 

Sibyl. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing 
more, quite dreadfully. 

L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully ; but 
you'll have your own way, of course. 

Sibyl. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. 
It was not merely yesterday; but in all we have read about 
him in Wilkinson, or in any book, we cannot understand 
what the Egyptians put their god into tbat ug]y little de- 
formed shape for. 

L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question ; because I can 
answer anything I like, to that. 

Egypt. Anything you like will do quite. well for us; we 
shall be pleased with the answer, if you are. 

L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen ; for I 
must begin by the statement that queens seem to have dis- 
liked all sorts of work, in those days, as much as some queens 
dislike sewing to-day. 

Egypt. Now, it's too bad ! and just when I was trying to 
liay the civillest thing I could! 

L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing 
ioV 



THE CKYSTAL LIFE. 61 

EaTPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fin- 
gers ? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I 
sew long. 

L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every 
body got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that 
thread always cut people's fingers. At ail events, every 
kind of manual labour was despised both by them, and the 
Greeks ; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, 
they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also, 
knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the 
special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfec- 
tion strengthened the body distortedly ; one energy or mem- 
ber gainuig at the expense of the rest. They especially 
dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done 
near fire : yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-wcrk, 
as the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed 
reverence and scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaes- 
tus, and the lower Pthah. 

Sibyl. But what did you mean by making him say ' Every- 
thing great 1 can make small, and everything small great ?' 

L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen 
in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed 
in a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian (.ould have 
conceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless manual 
labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, iu 



62 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected^ 
aggrandising itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense 
of all noble things. I heard an orator, and a good one too, 
at the Working Men's College, the other day, make a great 
point in a description of our railroads ; saying, with grandly 
conducted emphasis, ' They have made man greater, and the 
world less.' His working audience were mightily pleased ; 
they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger them 
selves ; and all the rest of the world less. I should have 
enjoyed asking them (but it would have been a pity — they 
were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the 
world made ; — and whether, at present, those of them really 
felt the biggest men, who lived in the least houses. 

Sibyl. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he 
could make weak things strong, and small things great ? 

L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature ; 
but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair 
in our neighbourhood — a very fine fair we thought it. You 
never saw such an one ; but if you look at the engraving of 
Turner's ' St. Catherine's Hill,' you will see what it was like. 
There were curious booths, carried on poles; and peep-shows ; 
and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much 
barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like : and in the alleys 
of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, 
after their fashion, very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah 



THE CEYSTAL LIFE. 63 

Bet to work upon it one day ; be made the wooden poles into 
iron ones, and put them across, like his own crooked legs, 
go that you always fall over them if you don't look where 
you are going; and he turned all the canvas into p;iiies of 
glass, and put it up on his iron cross-poles ; and made ail the 
little booths into one great booth ; — and people said it was 
very line, and a new style of architecture ; and Mr. Dickens 
said nothing was ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very 
true. And then the little Pthah set to work to put fine fair> 
ings in it ; and he painted the INTineveh bulls afresh, with the 
blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), 
and ne got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded 
their wings like his gingerbread of old times ; and he sent 
for everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. 
There are the casts of Niobe and her children ; and the 
Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and iSTew-Zealanders; 
and the Shakespeare House ; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le 
Petit Blondin; aud Handel; and Mozart; and no end of 
shops, and buns, and beer; and all the little-Pthali- worship- 
pers say, never was anything so sublime ! 

Sibyl. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these 
Crystal Palace concerts ? They're as good as good can be. 

L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million oi 
bad voices in them. When I want a song, I get Julia Man 
nering and Lucy Bertram and Counsellor Pleydell to sing 



64 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

'We be three poor Mariners' to me; then I've no headache 
next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when 1 
can ; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always 
get a reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I 
am sure I can see the kettle-drummer drum. 

Sibyl. Now do be serious, for one minute. 

L. I am serious — never was more so. You know one can't 
see the modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the 
vibration of the drummer's hand; and it's lovely. 

Sibyl. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to 
see! 

L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, 
is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most 
music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the 
chiefly interesting part of the business. I'm always thinking 
how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who 
care so little for their half-crown's worth, to be set to try 
and do a half crown's worth of anything like it. 

Maky. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and 
help to the people of London ? 

L. Tlie fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear ; 
but they are spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. 
And the palace (as they call it) is a better place for them, by 
much, than the old fair ; and it is always there, instead of fox 
three days only; and it shuts up at proper hours of night 



THB CRYSTAL LIFE. 65 

And good use may be made of the things in it, if you know 
how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them 
nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work — nothing 
but hanmier and tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his 
doing, in the place, only the other day. Some unhappy 
metal-worker — ^I am not sure if it was not a metal- w^orking 
firm — ^had taken three years to make a Golden eagle. 

Sibyl. Of real gold ? 

L. !N"o ; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent 
metals — it is no matter what. I meant a model of our chief 
British eagle. Every feather was made separately ; and 
every filament of every feather separately, and so joined on ; 
and all the quills modelled of the right length and right sec- 
tion, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened together.. 
You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing, 
but take my proud word for once, that when I go to the 
Zoological Gardens, and happen to have a bit of chalk in my 
pocket, and the Grey Harpy will sit, without screwing his 
head round, for thirty seconds, — I can do a better thing of 
him in that time than the three years' work of this industri- 
ous firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my 
object, — not myself; and during the three years, the firm's 
object, in every fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not 
the eagle. That is the true meaning of the little Pthah's 
having no eyes — ^he can see only himself. The Egyptian beetle 



66 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

was not quite the full type of him ; our northern ground 
beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at work, gather- 
ing its treasures (such as they are) into little round balls ; and 
pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it, — head 
downmost all the way, — like a modern political economist 
with his ball of capital, declaring that a nation can stand on 
its vices better than on its virtues. But away with you, 
children, now, for I'm getting cross. 

DoKA. Tm going down stairs ; I shall take care, at any 
rate, that there are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboardB 



Cecture 4. 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS, 



LECTURE rV. 

THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

A worhing Lecture^ in the large Schoolroom^ with experimental 

Interludes. The great hell has rung unexpectedly, 

Kathleen (entering disconsolate., though first at the sum" 
mons). Oh dear, oh dear, what a day! Was ever anythmg 
so provoking ! just when we wanted to crystallise ourselves ; 
— and I'm sur*^ it's going to rain all day lonsr 

L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it. 
But I don't see why Irish girls should also look so dismal. 
Fancy that you don't want to crystallise yourselves : you 
didn't, the day before yesterday, and you were not unhappy 
when it rained then. 

Flokeie. Ah ! but we do want to-day ; and the rain's so 
tiresome. 

L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the 
richer by the expectation of playing at a new game, you 
choose to make yourselves unhappier than when you had 
nothing to look forward to, but the old ones. 

Isabel. But then, to have to wait — wait — wait ; and be 
fore wc'a e tried it ; — and perhaps it mil rain to-morrow, too ) 



10 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can 
make ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses. 
Isabel. You may stick perhapses into your little minds, like 
pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made 
Gulliver with their arrows, when he would not lie quiet. 

Isabel. But what are we to do to-day ? 

L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw 
there was nothing better to be done. And to practise pa- 
tience. I can tell you children, that requires nearly as much 
practising as music ; and we are continually losing our lessons 
when the master comes. IN'ow, to-day, here's a nice little 
adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly. 

Isabel. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it 
properly. 

L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel ? The more 
need to practise. All one's life is a music, if one touches the 
notes rightly, and in time. But there must be no hurry. 

Kathleen. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a 
rainy day. 

L. There's no music in a ' rest.' Katie, that I know of: but 
there's the making of music in it. And people are always 
missing that part of the life-melody ; and scrambling on with- 
out counting — not that it's easy to count; but nothing on 
which so much depends ever is easy. People are always 
talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but 



THE CRYSTAL OEDERS. 71 

patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, — and 
the rarest, too. I know twenty persevering girls for one 
patient one : but it is only that twenty-first who can do her 
work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at the root 
of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases 
to be happiness, when Impatience companions her. 

(Isabel and Lily sit down on the floor ^ and fold theif 
hands. The others follow their example.) 

Good children ! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. 
Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Pa- 
tience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or 
even runs : she seldom sits ; though she may sometimes have 
to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments ; or like 
Chaucer's, ' with face pale, upon a hill of sand.' But we are 
not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous 
forenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise into ? we 
know nothing about them yet. 

(The pictures of resignation rise from the floor, not in 
the patientest 'inanner. General applause.) 

Mary {loith one or two others). The very thing we wanted 
to ask you about ! 

Lily. "VYe looked at the books about crystals, but they are 
80 dreadful. 

L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, 
that's a fact: no road to any good knowledge is wholly 



72 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

among the lilies and the grass ; there is rough climbing to he 
done always. But the crystal-books are a little too dreadful, 
most of them, I admit ; and we shall have to be content with 
very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on 
each other's heads, you can only make yourselves into the 
sections of crystals, — the figures they show when they are 
cut through; and we will choose some that will be quite 
easy. You shall make diamonds of yourselves 

Isabel. Oh, no, no ! w^e won't be diamonds, please. 

L. Yes, you shall, Isabel ; they are very pretty things, if 
the jewellers, and the kings and queens, would only let therii 
alone. You shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies 
of yourselves, and emeralds ; and Irish diamonds ; two of 
those — with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very 
orderly, of course ; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, 
for which we will hope the best ; — and you shall make Derby- 
shire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and 
silver, and — Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without 
any making. 

Mary. Now, you know, the children will be getting quite 
wild : we must really get pencils and paper, and begin pro- 
perly. 

L. "Wait a minute. Miss Mary ; 1 think as we've the school 
room clear to-day, I'll try to give you some notion of the 
three great orders or ranks of crystals, into which all flie 



THE CRYSTAL, ORDERS. V3 

others seem more or less to fall. We shall only want one 
figure a day, in tlie playground ; and that can be drawn in 9 
minute : but the general ideas had better be fastened first. 1 
must show you a great many minerals ; so let me have three 
tables wheeled into the three windows, that we may keep our 
specimens separate ; — we will keep the three orders of cry 
tals on separate tables. 

[First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, and spread- 
ing of haize covers. Yiolet, oiot particidarly mind- 
ing what she is about, gets herself jammed into a 
corner, and hid to stand out of the way ; on which 
she devotes herself to meditation.) 

Violet [after interval of meditation). How strange it is 
that everything seems to divide into threes ! 

L. Everything doesn't divide into threes. Ivy won't, 
though shamrock will ; and daisies won't, though lilies will. 

Violet. But aU the nicest things seem to divide into 
threes. 

L. Violets won't. 

Violet. N"c ; I should think not, indeed ! But I mean the 
great things. 

L. I've always heard the globe had four quarters. 

Isabel. Well ; but you know you said it hadn't any (j[unr- 
ters at all. So mayn't it really be divided into three? 

L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the out 



74 THE CRTSIAI. OBDBRS. 

side of it, Isabel, it would be a fine world to live in ; and if it 
were divided into three in the inside of it, it would soon be 
no world to live in at all. 

DoKA. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate* 
[Aside to Mary.) He will get off into political economy 
before we know where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals 
are divided into three, then ? 

L. ^N'o ; but there are three general notions by which we 
may best get hold of them. Then between these notions 
there are other notions. 

Lily (alarmed). A great many ? And shall we have to 
learn them all? 

L. More than a great many — a quite infinite many. So 
you cannot learn them all. 

Lilt (greatly relieved). Then may we only learn the 
three ? 

L. Certainly; unless, when you have got those three 
notions, you want to have some more notions ; — which 
would not surprise me. But we'll try for the three, first. 
Katie, you broke your coral necklace this morning V 

Kathleen. Oh ! who told you ? It was in jumping. I*m 
Bo sorry! 

L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it ? 

Kathleen. I've lost some ; here are the rest in my pocket, 
if I can only get them out. 



THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 75 

L. YoTi mean to get them out some day, I suppose ; so 
try now. I Tv^ant them. 

(Kathleen empties her pocket on the floor. The heacU 
disperse. The School disperses also. Second Inter- 
lude — hunting piece.) 

L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour., to 
Isabel, who comes up from under the table with her hav, 
all about her ears., and the last flndable beads in her hand.) 
Mice are useful little things sometimes. lN"ow, mousie, I 
want all those beads crystallised. How many ways are there 
of putting them in order ? 

Isabel. Well, first one would string them, I suppose ? 

L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string liHimate 
atoms; but you can put them in a row, and then they 
fasten themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or 
needle. We will call these ' iVeec^^e-crystals.' What would 
be the next way ? 

Isabel. I suppose, as we are to get together in the play- 
ground, when it stops raining, in different shapes ? 

L. Yes ; put the beads together, then, in the simplest 
form you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and 
pack them close. 

Isabel {after careful endeavour). I can't get them chaser. 

L. That Avill do. IN'ow you may see, beforehand, that 
if you try to throw yourselves into square in this confu^'^d 



70 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

way, you will never know your places; so you had bettei 
consider every square as made of rods, put side by sida 
Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel ; put them into 
a little square. That, you may consider as made up of 
two rods of two beads each. Then you can make a square 
a size larger, out of three rods of three. Then the next 
square may be a size larger. How many rods, Lily? 

Lilt. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose. 

L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, 
look here ; make another square of four beads again. You 
see they leave a little opening in the centre. 

Isabel [pushing tioo opposite ones closer together). Now 
they don't. 

L. N"o; but now it isn't a square; and by pushing the two 
together you have pushed the two others farther apart. 

Isabel. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they 
were! 

L. Yes ; for before, each of them only touched two of the 
others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the 
other three. Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel: now 
you have three in a triangle — the smallest triangle you can 
make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at 
one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads ; but just the 
shape of the first one. N"ext a rod of four on the side of 
that ; and you have a triangle of ten beads : then a rod of 



THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 1) 

five on the side of that; and you have a triangle of Jfifteeii, 
Thus you have a square with five beads on the side, and a 
triangle with five beads on the side ; equal-sided, therefore, 
like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you 
may soon learn how to crystallise quickly into these two 
figures, which are the foundation of form in the commonest, 
and therefore actually the most important, as well as in the 
rarest, and therefore, by our esteem, the most important, 
minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand. 

Violet. Why, it is leaf gold ! 

L. Yes ; but beaten by no man's hammer ; or rather, not 
beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. 
There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it 
were beaten thin. 

Violet. How beautiful ! And it glitters like a leaf covered 
with frost. 

L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is 
gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass : for it 
is Transylvanian gold ; and they say there is a foolish gnome 
in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the 
moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't 
know how that may be : but the silver always is in the gold ; 
and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is 
woven so fine anywhere else. 

Mary (who has been looking through her magnifyi^ig 



78 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

glass). But this is not woven. This is all made of little tn 
angles. 

L. Say 'patched,' then, if you must be so particular. But 
if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many 
of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and 
those of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, 
what word will you take for the manufacture? 

Mat. There's no word — it is beyond words. 

L. Yes ; and that would matter little, were it not beyond 
thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, 
shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, 
will help you to remember the second kind of crystals. Leaf- 
crystals, or Foliated crystals ; though I show you the form in 
gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold 
is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised in leaves ; 
the real type of foliated cr}'stals is this thing. Mica ; which if 
you once feel well, and break well, you will always know 
again ; and you will often have ocoasion to know it, for you 
will find it everywhere, nearly, in hill countiies. 

Kathleen". If we break it well ! May we break it ? 

L. To powder, if you like . 

{^Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation 
Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophica\ 
treatment at all hands.) 

Florrie {to whom the last fragments have descended) 



THE CRYSTAL OEDEKS. ^g 

Always leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white 
dust! 

L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves. 

{Shmos them to Floerie through magnifying glass.) 

Isabel (peepmg over Floeeie's shoulder). But then this 
bit under the glass looks like that bit out of the glass ! If we 
oould break this bit under the glass, what would it be like ? 

L. It would be all leaves still. 

Isabel. And then if we broke those again ? 

L. All less leaves still. 

Isabel {im^mtient). And if we bi-oke them again, and 
again, and again, and again, and again? 

L. "Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could 
only see it. ISTotice that the little flakes already difier some- 
what from the large ones : because I can bend them up and 
down, and they stay bent ; while the large .flake, though it 
bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and 
broke, when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass 
would not bend at all. 

Mary. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in 
the same way ? 

L. No ; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteris- 
tic specimen of a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles 
are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which 
looks like a black mica; but you see it is made up of trianglei 



80 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an mterraed^ate 
link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the 
commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals. 

Mary. Is it iron ? I never saw iron so bright. 

L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised: from its resem 
blance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron. 

Kathleen. May we break this, too ? 

Lu Ko, for I could not easily get such another crystal; 
besides, it would not break hke the mica ; it is much harder. 
But take the glass again, and look at the fineness of the jag- 
ged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. 
The gold has the same : but you see them better here, ter- 
race above terrace, countless, and in successive angles, like 
superb fortified bastions. 

May. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles? 

L. Far from it; mica is occasionally so, but usually of 
hexagons; and here is a fohated crystal made of squares, 
which will show you that the leaves of the rock-land have 
their summer green, as well as their autumnal gold. 

Florrie. Oh! oh! oh! {jumps for joy). 

L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie ? 

Florrie. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a 
KLone. 

L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshme 
after a shower, you will find they are much brighter than 



THB CRYSTAL ORDERS. 81 

that ; and surely they are none the worse for being on stalks 
instead of in stones ? 

Florrie. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one 
oever looks, I suppose. 

L. Now you have it, Florrie. 

Violet (sighing). There are so many beautiful things we 
never see! 

L. You need not sigh for that, Yiolet ; but I will tell you 
what we should all sigh for, — that there are so many ugly 
things we never see. 

ViOLEi:. But we don't want to see ugly things ! 

L. You had better say, ' We don't want to suffer them.' 
Yow. ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty 
God has made, than human eyes can ever see ; but not glad 
in thinking how much more evil man has made, than his own 
soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever 
heal. 

Violet. I don't understand ; — how is that like the leaves ? 

L. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, 
as in our neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy 
at sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown stone 
and takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood, 
and you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single 
human creature beside us were in sharp pain ; but we can 
read, at breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of 



82 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

women and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves 
BtreAv the brooks in Yallombrosa ; — and then go out to plaj' 
croquet, as if nothing had happened. 

Mat. But we do not see the people being killed or dying. 

L. You did not see your brother, when you got the tele« 
gram the other day, saying he was ill. May; but you cried for 
him ; and played no croquet. But we cannot talk of these 
things now ; and what is more, you must let me talk straight 
on, for a little while ; and ask no questions till I've done : for 
we branch (' exfoliate,' I should say, niineralogically) always 
into something else, — though that's my fault more than 
yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a 
distinct notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals; and you see the sort 
of look they have: you can easily remember that 'folium' is 
Latin for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any 
other such stones, are called ' folia ; ' but, because mica is the 
most characteristic of these stones, other things that are like 
it in structure are called ' micas ;' thus we have Uran-mica, 
which is the green leaf I showed you; and Oopper-mica, 
which is another like it, made chiefly of copper; and this 
foliated iron is called ' micaceous iron.' You have then these 
two great orders, IS eedle-crystals, made (probably) of grains 
in rows ; and Leaf-crystals, made (probably) of needles inter- 
woven ; now, lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in 
oeaps, or knots, or masses, which may be made either oi* 



THE CKYSTAL ORDERS. 83 

leaves laid one upon another, or of needles bound like Eoman 
fasces ; and mica itself, when it is well crystallised, puts itself 
into such masses, as if to show us how others are made. 
Ileie is a brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully clii. 
selled at the sides as any castle tower; but you see it is entirely 
built of folia of mica, one laid above another, which break 
away the moment I touch the edge with my knife. Now, 
here is another hexagonal tower, of just the same size and 
colour, which I want you to compare with the mica carefully ; 
but as I cannot wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you 
quickly what main differences to look for. First, you will 
feel it is far heavier than the mica. Then, though its surface 
looks quite micaceous in the folia of it, wiien you try them 
with the knife, you will find you cannot break them away 

Kathleen. May I try ? 

L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my strong knife 
for you. [Mcperimental pause. Kathleen doing her best.) 
You'll have that knife shutting on your finger presently, 
Kate ; and I don't know a girl who would like less to have 
her hand tied up for a week. 

Kathleen {who also does not like to he beaten — giviiig up 
the knife despondently). What can the nasty hard thing be ? 

L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard 
set certainly, yet not so hard as it might be. If it were 
thoroughly well crystallised, you would see none of those 



84 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

micaceous fractures ; and the stone would be quite red ai.d 
clear, all through. 

KATHLEEif . Oh, cannot you show us one ? 

L. Egypt can, if you ask her ; she has a beautiful one in 
the clasp of her favourite bracelet. 

Kathleen. Why, that's a ruby ! 

L. Well, so is that thing you've been scratching at. 

Kathleen. My goodness! 

(Takes up the stone again, very delicately ^ and drops 
it. General consternation^ 

L. Never mind, Katie ; you might drop it from the top of 
the house, and do it no harm. But though you really are a 
very good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possibly 
be, remember, you have your faults, like other people; and, 
if I "were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything 
energetically, I wouhi assert it by 'my badness,' not 'my 
goodness.* 

Kathleen. Ah, now, it's too bad of you ! 
L. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my * too-oadness.' 
But you may as well pick up the ruby, now you have drop- 
ped it ; and look carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines 
which gleam on its surface ; and here is a pretty white sap- 
phire (essentially the same stone as the ruby), in which you 
will see the same lovely structure, like the threads of the 
finest white cobweb. I do not know what is the exact 



THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 85 

method of a ruby's construction ; but you see by these lines, 
what fine construction there ^5, even in this hardest of stones 
(after the diamond), which usually appears as a massive lump 
or knot. There is therefore no real mineralogical distinction 
between needle crystals and knotted crystals, but, practically, 
crystallised masses throw themselves into one of the three 
groups we have been examining to-day ; and appear either 
as Needles, as Folia, or as Knots ; when they are in needles 
(or fibres), they make the stones or rocks formed out of 
them '■fibrous /' when they are in folia, they make them 
^foliated f when they are in knots (or grains), '' granu- 
lar? Fibrous rocks are comparatively rare, in mass ; but 
fibrous minerals are innumerable ; and it is often a question 
which really no one but a young lady could possibly settle, 
whether one should call the fibres composing them ' threads' 
or ' needles.' Here is amianthus, for instance, which is quite 
as fine and soft as any cotton thread you ever sewed with ; 
and here is sulphide of bismuth, with sharper points and 
blighter lustre than your finest needles have ; and fastened 
in white webs of quartz more delicate than your finest lace ; 
and here is sulphide of antimony, which looks like mere 
purple wool, but it is all of purple needle crystals; and here 
is red oxide of copper (you must not breathe on it as you 
look, or you may b^ow some of the films of it ofiT the stone), 
which is simply a woven tissue of scarlet silk. However, 



86 ^ THE CRYSTAL ORDEES. 

theso finer thread forms are comparatively rare, while the 
bolder and needle-like crystals occur constantly ; so that, I 
believe, ' Needle-crystal' is the best tv ord. (the grand one is. 
' Acicular crystal,' but Sibyl will tell you it is all the same, 
only less easUy understood; and therefore more scientific), 
Then the Leaf-crystals, as I said, form an immense mass of 
foliated rocks ; and the Granular crystals, which are of many 
kinds, form essentially granular, or granitic and porphyritic 
rocks ; and it is always a point of more interest to me (and I 
think will ultimately be to you), to consider the causes which 
force a given mineral to take any one of these three general 
forms, than what the peculiar geometrical limitations are, 
belonging to its own crystals.* It is more interesting to me, 
for instance, to try and find out why the red oxide of copper, 
usually crystallising in cubes or octahedrons, makes itself 
exquisitely, out of its cubes, into this red silk in one particu- 
lar Cornish mine, than what are the absolutely necessary 
angles of the octahedron, which is its common form. At all 
events, that mathematical part of crystallography is quite 
beyond girls' strength ; but these questions of the various 
tempers and manners of crystals are not only comprehensible 
by you, but full of the most curious teaching for you. For 
in the fulfilment, to the best of their power, of their adopted 
form under given circumstances, there are conditions entirely 

* Note iv. 



THE CRYSTAL OEDEES. 8T 

resembling those of human virtue; and indeed expressible 
under no term so proper as that of the Virtue, or Courage 
of crystals : — which, if you are not afraid of the crystals 
making you ashamed of yourselves, we will try to get some 
notion of, to-morrow. But it will be a bye-lecture, and more 
about yourselves than the minerals. Don't come unless you 
like. 

Maey. I'm sure the crystals will make us ashamed of our- 
selves ; but we'll come, for all that. 

L. Meantime, look well and quietly over these needle, or 
thread crystals, and those on the other two tables, with mag- 
nifying glasses ; ^cd see what thoughts will come into your 
little heads about them. For the best thoughts are generally 
those which come without being forced, one does not know 
how. And so I hope you will get through your wet daj 
patiently. 



Cecture 5. 
CRYSTAL VIBTOE/S 



LECTURE V. 

CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

A quiet talk, in the afternoon, hy the sunniest window of the 
Drawing-room, Present, Floreie, Isabel, Mat, Lucilla, 
Kathleejs-, Doea^ Mary, and some others, who have saved 
time for the hye^Lecture. 

L. So you have really come, like good girls, to be made 
ashamed of yourselves ? 

DoEA {very meekly). No, we needn't be made so; we 
always are. 

L. Well, I believe that's truer than most pretty speeches : 
but you know, you saucy girl, some people have more reason 
to be so than others. Are you sure everybody is, as well as 
yDu? 

The General Voice. Yes, yes ; evei-ybody. 

L. What! Florrie ashamed of herself? 
(Floeeie hides behind the curtain^ 

L. And Isabel? 

(Isabel hides under the table.) 

li. And May? 
(Mat runs into the corner behind the piano.) 



92 CETSTAIi VIETITES. 

L. And Lucilla? 

(LuciLLA hides her face in her hands) 

L. Dear, dear ; but this will never do. I shall have to tell 
you of the faults of the crystals, instead of virtues, to put yon 
in heart again. 

May {coming out of her corner). Oh! have the crystal;- 
faults, like us ? 

L. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fight- 
ing their faults. And some have a great many faults ; and 
some are very naughty crystals indeed. 

Floerie {from behind her curtain). As naughty as me? 

IsAEEL {peeping from under the table cloth). Or me ? 

L. Well, I don't know. They never forget their syntax,, 
children, when once they've been taught it. But I think 
some of them are, on the whole, worse than any of you. 
Not that it's amiable of you to look so radiant, all in a 
minute, on that account. 

Dora. Oh ! but it's so much more comfortable. 

(Everybody seems to recover their spirits. Eclipse of 
Floeeie and Isabel terminates) 

L. What kindly creatures girls are, after all, to their 
Deighbours' failings ! I think you may be ashamed of ycur- 
selves indeed, now, children ! I can tell you, you shall 
hear of the highest crystalline merits that I can think of, 
to-day : and I wish there were more of them ; but crystals 



CRYSTAL VIETUES. 93 

have a limited, though a stern, code of morals; and their 
essential virtues are but two ; — the first is to be pure, and 
the second to be well shaped. 

Maet. Pure ! Does that mean clear — transparent ? 

L. E'o; unless in the case of a transparent substance. 
You cannot have a transparent crystal of gold ; but you 
may have a perfectly pure one. 

Isabel. But you said it was the shape that made things 
be crystals ; therefore, oughtn't their shape to be their fii'st 
virtue, not their second ? 

L. Right, you troublesome mousie. But I call their shape 
only their second virtue, because it depends on time and 
accident, and things which the crystal cannot help. If it is 
cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must take what shape it can ; 
but it seems as if, even then, it had in itself the power of 
rejecting impurity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here 
is a crystal of quartz, well enough shaped in its way ; but 
it seems to have been languid and sick at heart; and some 
white milky substance has got into it, and mixed itself up 
with it, all through. It makes the quartz quite yellow, if 
you hold it up to the light, and milky blue on the surface. 
Ilere is another, broken into a thousand separate facets, 
and out of all traceable shape; but as pure as a mountaio 
spring. I like this one best. 

The Atdlence. So do I— and I — and L 



94 CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

Mary. Would a crystallographer ? 

L. I think so. He would find many more laws curiously 
exemplified in the irregular]}) grouped but pure crystal. 
But it is a futile question, this of first or second. Purity 
is in most cases a prior, if not a nobler, virtue ; at all 
events it is most convenient to think about it first. 

Mary. But what ought we to thhik about it? Is there 
much to be thought — I mean, much to puzzle one ? 

L. I don't know what you call ' much.' It is a long 
time since I met with anything in which there was little. 
There's not much in this, perhaps. The crystal must be 
either dirty or clean, — and there's an end. So it is with 
one's hands, and with one's heart — only you can wash your 
hands without changing them, but not hearts, nor crystals. 
On the whole, while you are young, it \vill be as weU to 
take care that your hearts don't want much washing ; for 
they may perhaps need wringing also, when they do. 

(Audience doubtful and uncomfortable. Lucilla at last 
takes courage.) 

Lucilla. Oh ! but surely, sir, we cannot make our hearts 
clean ? 

L. Not easily, Lucilla ; so you had better keep them so, 
when they are. 

Lucilla. When they are ! But, sir 

L, WeU? 



CRYSTAL VIETUES. 95 

LuciLLA. Sir — surely — are we not told that thty are all 
efil? 

L. Wait a little, Lucilla ; that is difficult ground you are 
getting upon ; and we must keep to our crystals, till at 
least we understand what their good and evil consist in ; 
they may iielp us afterwards to some useful hints about 
our own. I said that their goodness consisted chiefly in 
purity of substance, and perfectness of form : but those are 
rather the effects of their goodness, than the goodness 
itself. The inherent virtues of the crystals, resulting in 
these outer conditions, might really seem to be best 
described in the words we should use respecting living 
creatures — 'force of heart' and 'steadiness of purpose.' 
There seem to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an 
imconquerable purity of vital power, and strength of crystal 
spirit. Whatever dead substance, unacceptant of tliis 
energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, or forced to 
take some beautiful subordinate form ; the purity of the 
crystal remains unsullied, and every atom of it bright with 
coherent energy. Then the second condition is, that from 
the beginning of its whole structure, a fine crystal seems 
tc have determined that it will be of a certain size and of 
a certain shape ; it persists in this plan, and completes it. 
Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an 
unusual form, and one which it might seem very difficult 



96 CRYSTAL VIRTFES. 

to build — a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other 
minor pyramids. But there is not a flaw in its contour 
throughout ; not one of its myriads of component sides but 
is as bright as a jeweller's facetted work (and far finer, if 
yon saw it close). The crystal points are as sharp as jave- 
lins; their edges will cut glass with a touch. Anything 
more resolute, consummate, determinate in form, cannot be 
conceived. Here, on the other hand, is a crystal of the 
same substance, in a perfectly simple type of form — a plain 
six-sided prism ; but from its base to its point, — and it is 
nine inches long, — it has never for one instant made up its 
mind what thickness it will have. It seems to have begun 
by making itself as thick as it thought possible with the 
quantity of material at command. Still not being as thick 
as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on more sub- 
stance at one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a 
panic of economy ; then puffed itself out again ; then 
starved one side to enlarge another ; then warped itself 
quite out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged 
on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite 
human image of decrepitude and dishonour ; but the worst 
of all the signs of its decay and helplessness, is that half- 
way up, a parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has 
rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out a 
cavity round its root, and then growing backwards, or 



JETSTAL VIRTUES. 97 

downwards, contrary to the direction of the main crystal. 
Yet I cannot trace the least difference in purity of sul> 
stance between the first most noble stone, and this ignoble 
and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in its will, 
or want of will. 

Maet. Oh, if we could but understand the meaning of it 
all! 

L. We can understand all that is good for us. It is just 
as true for us, as for the crystal, that the nobleness of life 
depends on its consistency, — clearness of purpose, — quiet and 
ceaseless energy. All doubt, and repenting, and botching, 
and retouching, and wondering what it will be best to do 
next, are vice, as well as misery. 

Mary (inuch loondering). But must not one repent when 
one does wrong, and hesitate when one can't see one's way ? 

L. You have no business at all to do wrono^ : nor to o:et 
mto any way that you cannot see. Your intelligence should 
always be far m advance of your act. Whenever you do not 
know what you are about, you are sure to be doing wrong. 

Kathleen-. Oh, dear, but I never know what I am about ! 

L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal to know, if you 
know that. And you find that you have done wi'ong after- 
wards ; and perhaps some day you may begin to know, or at 
least, think, what you are about. 

Isabel. But suiely people can't do very wrong if they don'1 

5 



98 CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

know, can they ? I mean, they can't be very naughty. They 
can be wrong, like Kathleen or me, when we make mistakes 3 
but not wrong in the dreadful way. I can't express what I 
mean ; but there are two sorts of wrong, are there not ? 

L. Yes, Isabel ; but you will find that the great diflerenc e 
is between kind and unkind wrongs, not between meant and 
unmeant wrong. Yery few people really mean to do wrong, 
— in a deep sense, none. They only don't know what they 
are about. Cain (Md not mean to do wrong when he killed 
Abel. 

(Isabel draws a deep breathy and opens her eyes very 
wide.) 

L. No, Isabel ; and there are countless Cains among us 
now, who kill their brothers by the score a day, not only for 
less provocation than Cain had, but for no provocation, — and 
merely for what they can make of their bones, — yet do not 
think they are doing wrong in the least. Then sometimes you 
have the business reversed, as over in America these last 
years, where you have seen Abel resolutely killing Cain, and 
not thinking he is doing wrong. The great difficulty is 
always to open people's eyes : to touch their feelings, and 
break their hearts, is easy ; the difficult thing is to break their 
heads. What does it matter, as long as they remain stupid, 
whether you change then* feelings or not ? You cannot be 
always at their elbow to tell them what is right : and the;y 



CETSTAL VIRTXTES. 99 

may just do as wrong as before, or worse ; and their best 
intentions merely make the road smooth for them, — you know 
where, children. For it is not the place itself that is paved 
with them, as people say so often. You can't pave the bot- 
tomless pit ; bat you may the road to it. 

May. AYell, but if people do as well as they can see how, 
surely that is the right for them, isn't it ? 

L. ISTo, May, not a bit of it ; right is right, and wrong is 
wrong. It is only the fool who does wrong, and says he 
*did it for the best.' And if there's one sort of person in the 
world that the Bible speaks harder of than another, it is 
fools. Tlieii- particular and chief way of saying 'There is no 
God' is this, of declaring that whatever their 'public opinion' 
may be, is right: and that God's opinion is of no conse- 
quence. 

May. But surely nobody can always know w^hat is right ? 

L. Yes, you always can, for to-day ; and if you do what 
you see of it to-day, you will see more of it, and more clearly, 
to-morrow. Here, for instance, you children are at school, 
and have to learn French, and arithmetic, and music, and 
several other such things. That is your 'right' for tlie pre- 
sent; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see that yon 
learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your 
slee]), or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn 
well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when 



100 CRYSTAL VIETUES. 

you dawdle. Tliere's no doubt of conscience about that, J 
suppose ? 

Violet, Xo ; but if one wants to read an amusing book, 
mstead of learning one's lesson ? 

L. You don't call that a ' question,' seriously, Violet ? You 
are then merely deciding whether you will resolutely do 
wrong or not. 

Mary. But, in after life, how many fearful difficulties may 
arise, however one tries to know or to do what is right ! 

L. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, to have felt 
that, whatever you may have seen. A great many of young 
ladies' difficulties arise from their falling in love with a wrong 
person : but they have no business to let themselves fall in 
love, till they know he is the right one. 

Dora. How many thousands ought he to have a year ? 

L. (disdaining reply.) There are, of course, certain crises 
of fortune when one has to take care .of oneself, and mind 
shrewdly what one is about. There is never any real doubt 
about the path, but you may have to walk veiy slowly. 

Mary. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some 
one who has authority over you ? 

L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for 
tlie guilt is in the will : but you may any day be forced to do 
a fatal thing, as you might be forced to take poison; the 
remarkable law of nature in such case^ being,, that it is 



CRYSTAL VIKTUES. 101 

always unfortunate you who are poisoned, and not the person 
who gives you the dose. It is a very strange law, but it is a 
law. Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal 
operation of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who 
gave it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally 
as well as physically, by other people's faults. You are, on 
the whole, very good children sitting here to-day ; — do you 
think that your goodness comes all by your own contriving ? 
or that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions are 
naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are 
playing, with wild eyes, on the dustheaps in the alleys of our 
great towns ; and who will one day till their prisons, — or, 
better, their graves ? Heaven only knows where they, and 
we who have cast them there, shall stand at last. But the 
main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, 
' Did you keep a good heart through it ? ' What you were, 
others may answer for; — what you tried to be, you must 
answer for, yourself. Was the heart pure and true— tell ua 
that? 

And so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, 
which I put aside a little ago. You would be afraid t<. 
answer that your heart was j)ure and true, would not you? 

Lucilla. Yes, indeed, sir. 

L. Because you have been taught that it is all evil — ' only 
evil continually.' Somehow, often as people say that, they 



102 CRYSTAL VIRTtTES. 

never seem, to me, to believe it? Do you really belie v« 
it? 

LuciLLA. Yes, sir ; I hope so. 

L. That you have an entirely bad heart ? 

LuciLLA (a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the 
monosyllable for the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in hef 
orthodoxy). Yes, sir. 

L. Florrie, I am sure you are tired ; I never like you to 
stay when you are tired ; but, you know, you must not play 
with the kitten while we're talking. 

Floreie. Oh ! but I'm not tired ; and I'm only nursing 
her. She'll be asleep in my lap, directly. 

L. Stop ! that puts me in mind of something I had to show 
you, about minerals that are like hair. I want a hair out of 
Tittie's tail. 

Florrie (quite rude, in her surprise, even to the point 
of repeating expressio7is). Out of Tittie's tail ! 

L. Yes ; a brown one : Lucilla, you can get at the tip 
of it nicely, under Florrie's arm; just pull one out for 
me. 

LuciLLA. Oh ! but, sir, it will hurt her so ! 

L. I^ever mind; she can't scratch you while Florrie is 
holding her. Now that I think of it, you had better pull 
out two. 

LuciLLA. But then she may scratch Florrie I and it will 



CEYSTAIi VIBTUES. 103 

hurt her so, sir ! if you only want brown hairs, wouldn't 
two of mine do ? 

L. Would you really rather pull out your own than 
Tittie'g ? 

LucTLLA. Oh, of course, if mine will do. 

L. But that's very wicked, LuciUa ! 

LuciLLA. Wicked, sir ? 

L. Yes ; if your heart was not so bad, you would much 
rather pull all the cat's hairs out, than one of your own. 

LuciLLA. Oh 1 but, sir, I didn't mean bad, like that. 

L. I believe, if the truth were told, LuciUa, you would 
like to tie a kettle to Tittle's tail, and hunt her round the 
playground. 

LuciLLA. Indeed, I should not, sir. 

L. 'That's not true, Lucilla ; you know it cannot be, 

LiJcrLLA. Sir? 

L. Certainly it is not ; — how can you possibly speak any 
truth out of such a heart as you have ? It is wholly deceitful. 

LuciLLA. Oh ! no, no ; I don't mean that way ; I don't 
mean that it makes me tell lies, quite out. 

L. Only that it tells lies within you ? 

LucTLLA. Yes. 

L. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say 
BO ; and I may trust the outside of your heart ; but within, 
it is all foul and false. Is that the way ? 



104 CETSTAL VIRTUES. 

LuciLLA. I suppose SO : I don't understand it, quite. 

L. There is do occasion for understanding it ; but do yoa 
feel it? Are you sure that your heart is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked ? 

LuciLLA {much relieved by finding herself among phraser 
mth which she is acquainted). Yes, sir. I'm sure of thac. 

L. (pensively). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla. 

LuciLLA. So ara I, indeed. 

L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla? 

LuciLLA. Sorry with, sir? 

L. Yes; I mean, where do you feel sorry? in your 
feet ? 

LuciLLA (laughing a little). No, sir, of coarse. 

L. In your shoulders, then ? 

LuciLLA. I^o, sir. 

L. You are sure of that ? Because, I fear, sorrow in the 
shoulders would not be worth much. 

LuciLLA. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am 
Borry. 

L. If you really are ! Do you mean to say that you are 
sure you are utterly wicked, and yet do not care ? 

LuciLLA. No, indeed ; I have cried about it often. 

L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart ? 

LuciLLA. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything. 

L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there 



CRYSTAL yiRTTTES. 105 

It is not the crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry; 
when you cry ? 

LuciLLA. No, sir, of course. 

L Then, have you two hearts; one of which is wicked, 
and the other grieved? or is one side of it sorry for the 
other side ? 

LuciLLA {weary of cross-examination^ and a little veos^d). 
Indeed, sir, you know I can't understand it ; but you know 
how it is written — ' another law in my members, warring 
against the law of my mind.' 

L. Yes, Lncilla, I know how it is written; but I do not 
see that it will hel]3 us to know that, if we neither understand 
what is written, nor feel it. And you will not get nearer to 
the meaning of one verse, if, as soon as you are puzzled by 
it, you escape to another, introducing three new words — 
*law,' 'members,' and 'mind'; not one of which you at 
present know the meaning of; and respecting which, you 
probably never will be much wiser; since men like Montes- 
quieu and Locke have spent great part of their lives in 
endeavouring to explain two of them. 

LuciLLA. Oh ! please, sir, ask somebody else. 

L. If I thought anyone else could answer better than you, 

Lucilla, I would : but suppose I try, instead, myself, to 

explain your feelings to you ? 

Lucilla. Oli, yes ; please do. 

5* 



106 CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

L. Mind, I say your ' feelings,' not your ' belief. For 1 
cannot undertake to explain anybody's beliefs. Still I must 
try a little, first, to explain the belief also, because I want to 
draw it to some issue. As far as I understand what you say, 
or any one else, taught as you have been taught, says, on 
this matter, — you think that there is an external goodness, a 
whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears beautiful 
outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness: a deep secret 
guilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible ; and which can 
only be seen by the Maker of us all. {Approving murmurs 
from audience.) 

L. Is it not so with the body as well as the sonl ? 

{Tioohed notes of interrogation^ 
L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing? 

{Grave faces^ signifying ' Certainly not^ and ' What 
next r) 
L, And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, 
whatever God sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you 
would not like it ? 

(Murmured ' iVb'^.') 
L. Nor would it be good for you ? 

{Silence.) 
L. The probability being that v/hat God does not allow 
you to see, He does not wish you to see; nor even to 
think of? 



CRYSTAL VTRTTJES. 107 

{Silence prolonged.^ 

L. It would not at all be good for you, for instauce, 
whenever you were washing your faces, and braiding youi 
tair, to be thinking of the shapes of the jawbones, and 
of the cartilage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures of 
the scalp? 

{Resolutely whispered N'o's.) 

L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily pro- 
cesses of nourishment and decay? 
(No.) 

L. Still less if instead of merely mferior and preparatory 
conditions of structure, as in the skeleton, — or inferior offices 
of structure, as in operations of life and death, — there were 
actual disease in the body ; ghastly and dreadful. You 
would try to cure it; but having taken such measures as 
were necessary, you would not think the cure likely to be 
promoted by perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking 
of them. On the contrary, you would be thankful for every 
moment of forgetfulness : as, in daily health, you must bo 
thankful that your Maker has veiled whatever is fearful in 
youi frame under a sweet and manifest beauty ; and haa 
made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that, 
both in yourself and in others : — not indeed concealing, or 
refusing to believe in sickness, if it come ; but never dwelling 
on it. 



108 CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

ISTow, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are 
just the snme. Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you ; 
and so far as you know any means of mending it, take 
those means, and have done : when you are examining 
yourself, never call yourself merely a ' sinner,' that is very 
cheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may even get to 
like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a 
coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed, jealous 
wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any 
of these. Take steady means to check yourself in what- 
ever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself 
of. And as soon as you are in active way of mending, you 
will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined cor- 
ruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy t5 uproot 
faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think 
of your faults ; still less of others' faults : in every person 
who comes near you, look for what is good and strong : 
honour that ; rejoice in it ; and, as you can, try to imitate 
it: and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when 
their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life 
should seem rugged as a palm tree stem ; still, never mind, 
go long as it has been growing ; and has its grand green 
shade of leaves, and weight of honied fruit, at top And 
even if you cannot find much good in yourself at last, think 
that it does not much matter to the universe either what 



CRYSTAL YIETTJES. 109 

you were, or are; think how many people are noble, if 
;. you cannot be; and rejoice in their nobleness. An immense 
quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, i^ 
\ merely a sickly egotism; which will rather gloat over its 
owTi evil, than lose the centrahsation of its interest in 
itself. 

Mart. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, 
how did the old Greek proverb ' Know thyself come to be 
so highly esteemed ? 

L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs ; Apollo's proverb, 
and the sun's ; — ^but do you think you can know yourself by 
looking into yourself? Never. You can know what you 
are, only by looking out of yom'self. Measure your own 
L^ powers with those of others ; compare your own interests 
with those of others ; try to understand what you appear to 
them, as well as what they appear to you ; and judge of 
yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately ; not 
positively : starting always with a wholesome conviction of 
the probability that there is nothing particular about you. 
For instance, some of you perhaps think you can write 
poetry. Dwell on your own feelings and doings : — and you 
Vill soon think yourselves Tenth Muses ; but forget your own 
feelings ; and try, instead, to understand a line or two of 
Cliaucer or Dante : and you will soon begin to feel yourselves 
very foolish girls — which is much hke the fact. 



110 CETSTAL VIRTUES. 

So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfor. 
tune ; — you meditate over its effects on you personally ; and 
begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a 
this or that or the other of profound significance ; and that 
all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little 
while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But 
give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy ; examine a 
little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, 
every second, to twenty times worthier persons: and your 
self-consciousness will change into pity and humility ; and 
you will know yourself, so far as to understand that ' there 
hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.' 

Kow, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any 
person of sense would arrive at, supposing the toxts which 
relate to the inner evil of the heart were as many, and as 
prominent, as they are often supposed to be by careless read- 
ers. But the way in which common people read their Bibles 
is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs 
ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over ana 
over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck 
to their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy 
readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and de- 
clare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture , 
and that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of 
the texts that way. Kyou want their juice, yov must press 



CETSTAIi VIETUES. Ill 

them Id cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human 
heart, insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all 
hf^arts, but on the terrific distinction between the bad and 
the good ones. 'A good man, out of the good treasure of hig 
heart, bringeth forth that which is good ; and an evil man, 
out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil' 
' They on the rock are they which, in an honest and good 
heart, having heard the word, keep it.' ' Delight thyself in 
the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' 
* The wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily 
shoot at hira that is upright in heart.' And so on ; they are 
countless, to the same effect. And, for all of us, the question 
is not at all to ascertain how much or how little corruption 
there is in human nature ; but to ascertain whether, out of all 
the mass of that nature, we are of the sheep or the goat 
breed ; whether we are people of upright heart, being shot 
at, or people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the 
texts bearing on the subject, this, which is a quite simple and 
practical order, is the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. 
' Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out ot it are the issues 
of life.' 

LuciLLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem! 

L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound 
to look consistent to a girl of fifteen ? Look up at your own 
room window ; — you can just see it from where you sit. I'm 



112 CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

glad that it is left open, as it ought to be, in so fine a day. 
But do you see what a black spot it looks, in the &uii-lightecl 
wall? 

LuciLLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink. 

L. Yet yoii know it is a very bright room when you are 
inside of it ; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it 
to be, that its Httle lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is 
very probable, also, that if you could look into your heart 
from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black 
hole indeed; nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell 
you tliat it looks so to Him ; but He will come into it, and 
make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put 
the shutters up. And the one question for you^ remember, 
is not 'dark or light?' but 'tidy or untidy?' Look well to 
your sweeping and garnishing; and be sure it is only the 
banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones a1 big 
back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black. 



Cectiire 6. 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 



LECTURE VI. 

CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

FuU co7iclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game ai 
crystallisation in the morning^ of which various account 
has to he rendered. In particular^ everybody has to explain 
why they were always where they were not intended to be. 

L. {having received and considered the report.) You have 
got on pretty well, children : but you know these were easy 
figures you have been trying. Wait till I have drawn you 
out the plans of some crystals of snow ! 

Maey. I don't think those will be the most diflScult : — 
they are so beautiful that we shall remember our places bet- 
ter ; and then they are all regular, and in stars : it is those 
k twisty oblique ones we are afraid of. 
L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and 
learn Friedrich's ' oblique order.' Tou will ' get it done 
for once, I think, provided you can march as a pair of com- 
passes would.' But remember, when you can construct the 
most difficult single figures, you have only learned half the 
game — ^nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals 
themselves play it. 



116 CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

Mary. Indeed ; what else is there ? 

L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually 
two or three, mider quite different crystallme laws, form 
together. They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, 
^hen they are in fine temper : and observe what this signifies. 
It signifies that the two, or more, minerals of different 
natures agree, somehow, between themselves, how much 
space each will want ; — agree which of them shall give way 
to the other at their junction ; or in what measure each will 
accommodate itself to the other's shape ! And then each 
takes its permitted shape, and allotted share of space ; yield- 
ing, or being yielded to, as it builds, till each crystal has 
fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to its differently-natured 
neighbom\ So that, in order to practise this, in even the 
simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearing 
different colours ; each must choose a different figure to con- 
struct ; and you must form one of these figures through the 
other, both going on at the same time. 

Mary. I think we may, perhaps, manage it ; but I cannot 
at all understand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so 
much preconcerting of plan, and so mucli giving way to each 
Other, as if they really were living. 

L Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, 
regulating all wilfulness of design : and, more curious still, 
the crystals do not always give way to each ^ther. They 



CRYSTAL QUARRELS. Ill 

show exactly the same varieties of temper that human crea 
rires might. Sometimes they yield the required place with 
perfect grace arid courtesy ; forming fantastic, but exquisitely 
ilnished groups : and sometimes they will not yield at all ; 
but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and honour, 
and even their o^vu likeness, in the contest. 

Mary. But is not that wholly wonderful ? How is it that 
one never sees it spoken of in books ? 

L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the con- 
stant laws under which the struggle takes place ; these inde- 
finite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. 
And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of 
thinking at all, when they look at stones. Not that it is of 
much use to thmk; the more one thinks, the more one is 
puzzled. 

Mary. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in 
botany ? 

L. Everything has its own wonders ; but, given the nature 
of the planl^ it is easier to understand what a flower wUl do, 
and why it does it, than, given anything we as yet know of 
stone-natnre, to understand what a crystal will do, and why 
it does it. You at once admit a kind of volition and choice, 
in the flower ; but we are not accustomed to attribute anything 
of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality, more like- 
ness to some conditions of human feeling among stones tbaF 



118 CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

among plants. There is a far greater difference between 
kindly-tempered and ill-tempered crystals of the same mine- 
ral, than between any two specimens of the same flower : and 
the friendships and wars of crystals depend more definitely 
and curiously on their varieties of disposition, than any associa- 
tions of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet, living 
with good mica ; one rich red, and the other silver white • 
the mica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to crystal- 
lise comfortably in ; and the garnet lives happily in its little 
white house ; fitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here 
are wicked garnets living with wicked mica. See what ruin 
they make of each other ! You cannot tell which is which ; 
the garnets look like dull red stains on the crumbling stone. 
By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard is a 
real saint, why he can't keep his garnets in better order. 
These are all under his care ; but I suppose there are too 
many of them for him to look after. The streets of Airolo 
are paved with them. 

Mat. Paved with garnets? 

L. "With mica-slate and garnets ; I broke this bit out of a 
paving stone. Now garnets and mica are natural friends, 
and generally fond of each other; but you see how tJiey 
quarrel when they are ill brought up. So it is always. Good 
crystals are friendly with almost all other good crystals, 
however little they chance to see of each othei*, or how- 



CEYSTAL QFAEEELS. 119 

ever opposite their habits may be; while wicked crystals 
quarrel with one another, though they may be exactly alike 
in habits, and see each other continually. And of course the 
♦^cked crystals quarrel with the good ones. 

Isabel. Then do the good ones get angry ? 

L. No, never : they attend to their own work and life ; 
and live it as well as they can, thougli they are always the 
sufferers. Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest 
race and finest temper, who was bom, unhappily for him, 
in a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in Savoy; and he 
has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See 
here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and 
nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would have died in 
despair; but he only gathered himself together, like Her- 
cules against the serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over 
the clay; conquered it, — imprisoned it, — and lived on. Then, 
when he was a little older, came more clay; and poured 
itself upon him here, at the side ; and he has laid crystal 
over that, and lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came 
on at his angles, and tried to cover them, and round them 
away; but upon that he threw out buttress-crystals at his 
angles, all as true to his own central line as chapels round 
a cathedral apse; and clustered them round the clay; and 
conquered it again. At last the clay came on at his sum- 
mit, and tried to blunt his summit; but he could not 



120 CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

endure tLat for an instant ; and left his flanks all rough, bu4 
pure ; and fought the clay at bis crest, and built drest over 
crest, and peak over peak, till the clay surrendered at last 
and here is his summit, smooth and pure, terminating a 
pyramid of alternate clay and crystal, half a foot high! 

Lilt. Oh, how nice of him ! What a dear, brave crystal ! 
But I can't bear to see his flanks all broken, and the clay 
within them. 

L. Yes ; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to 
such contention ; there are some enemies so base that even 
to hold them captive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here 
has been quite a diflerent kind of struggle : the adverse 
power has been more orderly, and has fought the pure crys- 
tal in ranks as firm as its own. This is not mere rage and 
impediment of crowded evil : here is a disciplined hostility ; 
army against army. 

Lilt. Oh, but this is much more beautiful ! 

L. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them; 
it is a pity they are at war, but they war grandly. 

Mary. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal? 

L. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy 
h really limestone ; but in the first, disordered, and mixed 
with true clay; -while, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallise^i 
into Its own primitive form, the oblique six-sided one, which 
you know: and out of these it makes regiments; and then 



I 



CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 121 

squares of the regiments, and so charges the rock crystal, 
literally in square against column. 

Isabel. Please, please, let me see. And what does the 
took crystal do ? 

L. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite 
cuts it through at every charge. Look here, — and here! 
The loveliest crystal in the whole group is hewn fairly into 
two pieces. 

Isabel. Oh, dear ; but is the calcite harder than the crys- 
tal then ? 

L. IN'o, softer. Yery much softer. 

Mart. But then,, how can it possibly cut the crystal ? 

L. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it. 
The two were formed together, as I told you ; but no one 
knows how. Still, it is strange that this hard quartz has in 
all cases a good-natured way with it, of yielding to every- 
thing else. All sorts of soft things make nests for themselves 
in it; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything. It 
has all the rough outside Avork; and every sort of cowardly 
and weak mineral can shelter itself within it. Look; these 
are hexagonal plates of mica ; if they were outside of this 
crystal they would break, like burnt paper; but they are 
inside of it, — nothing can hurt them, — the crystal has taken 
them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate edges as 

sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock 

6 



122 CEYSTAL QUAKRBLS. 

Here is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a 
toucb of your finger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on 
the rock in which it lay, as if the quartz had been as soft aa 
wool. 

Lily. Oh, the good, good quartz ! But does it never get 
inside of anything ? 

L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps 
answer, without being laughed at, that it gets inside of itself 
sometimes. But I don't remember seeing quartz make a nest 
for itself in anything else. 

Isabel. Please, there was something I heard you talkmg 
about, last term, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but 
I heard something about nests ; and I thought it w^as birds' 
nests; and I couldn't help listening; and then, I remem- 
ber, it was about ' nests of quartz in granite.' I remember, 
because I was so disappointed ! 

L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly ; but I can't 
tell you about those nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow: 
but there's no contradiction between my saying then, and 
now ; I will show you that there is not, some day. Will you 
trust riie meanwhile ? 

Isabel. Won't I ! 

L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in 
quartz ; it is on a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here 
is nobly born quartz living with a green mineral, called epi 



CKTSTAL QUARRELS. 122 

dote : and they are immense friends. Now, you see, a com 
paratively large and strong quartz-crystal, and a very weak 
and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow, close 
by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so 
that at last they meet. They cannot go on growing toge 
ther ; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, and more 
than twenty times as strong,* as the epidote ; but he stops 
at once, just in the very crowning moment of his life, when 
he is building his own summit ! He lets the pale little film 
of epidote grow right past him ; stopping his own summit 
for it ; and he never himself grows any more. 

Lilt {after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz 
never wicked then ? 

L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, 
compared to other things. Here are two very characteristic 
examples ; one is good quartz, living with good pearlspar, 
and the other, wicked quartz, living with wicked pearlspar. 
In both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate of iron : but, 
in the first place, the iron takes only what it needs of room ; 
and is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with such 
precision, that you must break it away before you can tell 
svhether it really penetrates the quartz or not ; while the 
crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have a lovely bloom 

* Quartz is not much harder ttiau epidote; the strengtli is onJy svip- 
[)08ed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters. 



24 CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

on their surface besides. But here, when the two minerals 
quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged and 
torn to pieces ; and there is not a single iron crystal whose 
shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the 
worst of it, in both instances. 

YiOLET. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz 
again, with the weak little film across it? it seems such a 
strange lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of a human being. 

L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, 
Violet. It is often a necessary and noble thing ; but no form 
nor degree of suicide can be ever lovely. 

Violet. But self-sacrifice is not suicide ! 

L. What is it then ? 

Violet. Giving up one's self for another. 

L. Well ; and what do you mean by ' giving up one's 
self?' 

Violet. Giving up one's tastes, one's feelings, one's time, 
one's happiness, and so on, to make »th©rs happy. 

L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who 
expects you to make him happy in that way. 

Violet {hesitating). In what way? 

L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, 
and happiness. 

Violet. No, no, I don't mean that; but you know, for 
other people, one must. 



CKYSTAL QUABEELS. 125 

L. For people who don't love you, and whom you know 
nothing about ? Be it so ; but how does this ' giving up' 
differ from suicide then ? 

Violet. Why, giving up one's pleasures is not killing one's 
eelf? 

L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; neither is it self 
sacrifice, but self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. 
If you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will 
wither ; you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the 
pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the 
light ; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim your- 
self is partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and 
you will soon slay. 

Violet. But why do you make me think of that verse 
then, about the foot and the eye ? 

L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, 
if foot or eye offend you ; but why should they offend you ? 

Violet. I don't know; I never quite understood that. 

L. Yet it is a sharp order ; one needing to be well under- 
stood if it is to be well obeyed ! When Helen sprained her 
t ancle the other day, you saw how strongly it had to be band 
aged ; that is to say, prevented from all work, to recover it. 
But the bandage was not ' lovely.' 
Violet. No, indeed. 



126 CRYSTAL QUARKELS. 

bitten, instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cul 
it off. But the amputation would not have been ' lovely.' 

Violet, l^o. 

L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you 
— if the light that is in you be darkness, and your feet run 
into mischief, or are taken in the snare, — it is indeed time to 
pluck out, and cut off, I think : but, so crippled, you can 
never be what you might have been otherwise. You entei 
into life, at best, halt or maimed; and the sacrifice is not 
beautiful, though necessary. 

Violet (cifter a pause). But when one sacrifices one's 
self for others ? 

L. Why not rather others for you ? 

Violet. Oh ! but 1 couldn't bear that. 

L. Then why should they bear it ? 

Dora {bursting in, indignant). And Thermopylae, and 
Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, 
and Iphigenia, and Jephthah's daughter ? 

L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the 
Samaritan woman's son ? 

Dora. Which Samaritan woman's ? 

L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29. 

Dora {pheys). How horrid! As if we meant anything 
like that ! 

L. You don't seem to me to know in the least what yow 



CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 127 

do mean, children. What practical difference is there 
between ' that,' and what you are talking about ? The 
Samaritan children had no voice of their own in the busi- 
ness, it is true ; but neither had Ipliigenia : the Greek girl 
was certainly neither boiled, nor eaten ; but that only 

_ makes a difference in the dramatic effect ; not in the prin- 
ciple. 

Dora {biting Jier lip). Well, then, tell us what we ought 
to mean. As if you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it 

F yourself, at this moment, more than we do, if you wouldn't 
be tiresome ! 

L. I mean, and always have meant, simply this, Dora ; — 
that the will of God respecting us is that we shall live by 

1^ each other's happiness, and hfe ; not by each other's misery, 
or death. T made you read that verse which so shocked you 
just now, because the relations of parent and child are 

■ typical of all beautiful human help. A child may have to 

^^ die for its parents ; but the purpose of Heaven is that it 
shall rather live for them; — that, not by its sacrifice, but by 
its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them 
renewal of strength ; and as the arrow in the hand of the 
giant. So it is in all other right relations. Men help each 
other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not 
intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen 
themselves for each other. And among the many appa 



128 CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

rently beautiftil things which turn, through mistaken use, :o 
utter evil, I am not sure but that the thoughtlessly meek and 
self sacrificing spirit of good men must be named as one of 
the fatallest. They have so often been taught that there 
is a virtue in mere suffering, as such ; and foolishly to hope 
that good may be brought by Heaven out of all on which 
Heaven itself has set the stamp of evil, that we may avoid 
it, — that they accept pain and defeat as if these were theif 
appointed portion ; never understanding that their defeat is 
not the less to be mourned because it is more fetal to their 
enemies than to them. The one thing that a good man has 
to do, and to see done, is justice ; he is neither to slay 
himself nor others causelessly : so far from denying himself, 
since he is pleased by good, he is to do his utmost to get hits 
pleasure accomplished. And I only wash there were strength, 
fidelity, and sense enough, among the good Englishmen of 
this day, to render it possible for Jiem to band together in 
a vowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of heart and 
hand, the doing of human justice among all who came 
within their sphere. And finally, for your own teaching, 
observe, although there may be need for much self sacrifice 
and self denial in the correction of faults of character, the 
moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases. 
Nothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to 
do. 



CKYSTAI. QUAREELS. 129 

VfOiJET. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with ua 
when we try to please others, and not ourselves ? 

L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right 
life, we must continually and reciprocally submit and sur 
render in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways : and 
these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you 
all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, 
are as good for the yielder as the receiver : they strengthen 
and perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real 
sacrifice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others 
(though it may be needed, and though all brave creatures 
hold their lives in their hand, to be given, when such need 
comes, as frankly as a soldier gives his life in battle), is yet 
always a mournful and momentary necessity ; not the 
fulfilment of the continuous law of being. Self-sacrifice 
which is sought after, and triumphed in, is usually foolisli ; 
and calamitous in its issue : and by the sentimental procla- 
mation and pursuit of it, good people have not only made 
most of their own lives useless, but the whole framework 
of their religion so hollow, that at this moment, while the 
English nation, with its lips, pretends to teach every man to 
'love his neighbour as himself,' with its hands and feet it 
clutches and tramples like a wild beast ; and practically lives, 
every soul of it that can, on other people's labour. Briefly, 

Khe constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain 

6* 



130 CRTSTAL QUAKllELS. 

his own pdwers and special gifts ; and fco strengthen them foi 
the help of others. Do you think Titian would have helped 
the world better by denying himself, and not painting ; oi 
'yasella by denying himself, and not singing? The real 
nrtue is to be ready to sing the moment people ask us ; as 
he was, even in purgatory. The very word ' virtue ' means 
not ' conduct ' but ' strength,' vital energy in the heart. 
Were not you reading about that group of words beginning 
with Y, — vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on, — in Max 
Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can't you tell the others 
about it ? 

Sibyl. No, I can't ; will you tell us, please ? 

L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time 
to-morrow, and I'll tell you about it, if all's well. But the gist 
of it is, children, that you should at least know two Latin 
words ; recollect that ' mors ' means death and delaying ; and 
' vita ' means life and growing : and try always, not to mor- 
tify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves. 

Violet. But, then, are we not to mortify our earthly- 
affections? and surely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least 
in God's service, if not in man's ? 

L. Really, Violet, we are getting too serious. I've given 
you enough ethics for one talk, I think ! Do let us have a 
little play. Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant- 
hill in the wood, this morning ? 



CRYSTAL QUAEKELS. 131 

JjUY. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, not I ; I was 
only trying to help them a little. 

L. And they wouldn't be helped, I suppose ? 

Lily. IN"©, indeed. I can't think why ants are always so 
tiresome, when one tries to help them ! They were carrying 
bits of stick, as fast as they could, through a piece of grass ; 
and pulling and pushing, so hard ; and tumbling over and 
over, — ^it made one quite pity them ; so I took some of the 
bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, where I 
thought they wanted to put them ; but instead of being 
pleased, they left them directly, and ran about looking quite 
angry and frightened ; and at last ever so many of them got 
up my sleeves, and bit me all over, and I had to come away. 

L. I couldn't think what you were about. I saw your 
French grammar lying on the grass behind you, and thought 
perhaps you had gone to ask the ants to hear you a French 
verb. 

Isabel. Ah ! but you didn't, though ! 

L. Why not, Isabel ? I knew, well enough, Lily couldn't 
learn that verb by herself. 

Isabel. No ; but the ants couldn't help her. 

L. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, 
Lily? 

Lilt {thiriking), I ought to have learned something from 
thera, perhaps. 



132 CRYSTAL QUAERELS. 

L. But none of them left their sticks to help you through 
the irregular verb ? 

Ln.Y. No, indeed. {Laughing^ with some others^ 

L. What are you laughing at, children ? I cannot see whj' 
the ants should not have left their tasks to help Lily m her's, 
— since here is Violet thinking she ought to leave her tasks, 
to help God in His. Perhaps, however, she takes Lily's more 
modest view, and thinks only that ' He ought to learn some- 
thing from her.' 

( Tears in Violet's eyes.) 

Dora [scarlet). It's too bad — it's a shame: — poor Violet! 

L. My dear children, there's no reason why one should be 
so red, and the other so pale, merely because you are made 
for a moment to feel the absurdity of a phrase which you 
have been taught to use, in common with half the religious 
world. There is but one way in which man can ever help 
God — that is, by letting God help him : and there is no way 
in which his name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by call- 
ing the abandonment of our own work, the performance of 
His. 

God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where 
Ho wishes us to be employed ; and that employment is truly 
'our Father's business.' He chooses work for every crea* 
ture which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply 
and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense 



CRYSTAL QUAERELS. 133 

enough, for what He wants us to do ; if we either tire our- 
selves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may 
always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be 
pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. Now, away 
with you, children ; and be as happy as you can. And when 
you cannot, at least don't plume yourselves upon pouting. 



€ttiuxz 7. 
^OMJE VIRTUES. 



LECTURE Vn. 

HOME VIRTUES. 
By the fireside^ in the Drawing-room. Evening. 

Dora. Now, the curtains are drawn, and the fire's bright. 
and here's your armchair — and you're to tell us all about 
what you promised. 

L. All about what ? 

Dora. All about virtue. 

Kathleen. Yes, and about the words that begin with Y. 

L. I heard you singing about a word that begins with V, 
in the playground, this morning, Miss Katie. 

Kathleen. Me singing ! 

May. Oh tell us — tell us. 

L. ' Vilikens and his ' 

Kathleen (stopping his moxithJ). Oh ! please don't. 
Where were you ? 

Isabel. I'm sure I wish I had known where he was ! We 
fost him among the rhododendrons, and I don't know where 
he got to ; oh, you naughty — naughty — [climbs on his knee) 

Dora. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk. 



138 HOME VIRTUES. 

L. jT don't. 

DoEA. Oh, but you must. You promised, you know. 

L. Yes, if all was well ; but all's ill. I'm tired, and ci oss j 
and I won't. 

Dora. You're not a bit tired, and you're not crosser than 
two sticks ; and we'll make you talk, if you were crosser 
than six. Come here, Egypt ; and get on the other side of 
him. 

(Egypt takes up a commanding position near the hearth 
brush.) 

Dora {reviewing her forces). Now, Lily, come and sit on 
the rug in front. 

(Lily does as she is bid.) 

L. {seeing he has no chance against the odds.) Well, 
well ; but I'm really tired. Go and dance a little, first ; and 
let me think. 

Dora, No; you mustn't thmk. You will be wanting to 
make us think next ; that will be tiresome. 

L. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of thinking : and 
then I'll talk as long as you like. 

Dora. Oh, but we can't dance to-night. There isn't time ; 
and we want to hear about virtue. 

L. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is the first of 
girls' virtues. 

Egypt. Indeed ! And the second ? 



HOME VIRTUES. 139 

L. Dressing. 

Egypt. Now, you needn't say that! I mended that teaf 
the first thing before breakfast this morniDg. 

L. I cannot otherwise express the ethical principle, Egypt ; 
whether you ha\e mended your gown or not. 

DoEA. Now don't be tiresome. We really must hear 
about virtue, please ; seriously. 

L. Well. I'm telling you about it, as fast as I can. 

DoEA. What! the first of girls' virtues is dancing? 

L. More accm-ately, it is wishing to dance, and not wishing 
to tease, nor hear about virtue. 

DoEA {to Egypt). Isn't he cross? 

Egypt. How many balls must we go to in the season, to 
be perfectly virtuous ? 

L. As many as you can without losing your colour. But 
I did not say you should wish to go to balls. I said you 
should be always wanting to dance. 

Egypt. So we do ; but everybody says it is very wrong. 

L. Why, Egypt, I thought— 

* There was a lady once, 

That would not be a queen, — that would she not, 
For all the mud in Egypt.' 

You were complaining the other day of having to go out a 
great deal oftener than you Mked. 



140 HOME VIRTUES. 

Egypt. Yes, so I was; but then, it isn't to dance. There's 
no room to dance: it's — {Pausing to consider what it is 
for). 

L. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, there's no harm 
n that,. Girls ought to like to be seen. 

Dora {7ier e^es flashing). I^ow, you don't mean that; 
and you're too provoking; and we won't dance again, for a 
month. 

L. It will answer every purpose of revenge, Dora, if you 
only banish me to the library ; and dance by yourselves ; but 
I don't think Jessie and Lily will agree to that. You like me 
to see you dancing, don't you, Lily ? 

Lily. Yes, certainly, — when we do it rightly. 

L. And besides. Miss Dora, if young ladies really do not 
want to be seen, they should take care not to let their eyes 
flash when they dislike what people say : and, more than that, 
it is all nonsense from beginning to end, about not wanting 
to be seen. I don't know any more tiresome flower in the 
borders than your especially 'modest' snowdrop; which one 
always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome 
trouble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before 
jou can see it ; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girla 
should be like daisies ; nice and white, with an edge of red, 
if you look close ; making the ground bright wherever they 
are ; knowing simply and quietly that they do it, and am 



HOME VIKTUES. 141 

meai.t to do it, and that it would be very wrong if they 
didn't do it. ItTot want to be seen, indeed ! How long were 
you in doing your back hair, this afternoon, Jessie ? 

(Jessie not immediately answering, Dora comes to Tvee 
assistance.) 

Dora. ITot above three-quarters of an hour, I think, 
Jess? 

Jessie {putting her finger up). Now, Dorothy, you needn't 
talk, you know ! 

L. I know she needn't, Jessie ; I shall ask her about those 
dark plaits presently. (Dora loohs round to see if there is 
any way ope7i for retreat.) But never mind; it was worth 
the time, whatever it was ; and nobody will ever mistake 
that golden wreath for a chignon : but if you don't want it 
to be seen, you had better wear a cap. 

Jessie. Ah, now, are you really going to do nothing but 
play? And we all have been thinking, and thinking, all 
day ; and hoping you would tell us things ; and now — ! 

L. And now I am telling you things, and true things, and 
things good for you ; and you won't believe me. You might 
as well have let me go to sleep at once, as I wanted to. 
(E^ideavours again to make himself comfortahle.) 

Isabel, Oh, no, no, you sha'n't go to sleep, you naughty! 
—Kathleen, come here. - 

L, {knowing what he has to expect if Kathleen comes,) 



142 HOME VIRTUES. 

Get away, Isabel, you're too heavy, {flitting up.) Whai 
haye I btjen saying? 

Dora. I do believe he has been asleep all the time ! You 
never heard anything like the things you've been saying. 

L. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, and anything 
like them, it is all I want. 

Egypt. Yes, but we don't understand, and you know we 
don't ; and we want to. 

L. What did I say first ? 

DoKA. That the first virtue of girls was wantmg to go to 
balls. 

L. I said nothing of the kind. 

Jessie. ' Always wanting to dance,' you said. 

L. Yes, and that's true. Their first virtue is to be 
intensely happy ; — so happy that they don't know what to do 
with themselves for happiness, — and dance, instead of walk 
ing. Don't you recollect ' Louisa,' 

*No fountain from a rocky cave 

E'er tripped with foot so free; 
She seemed as happy as a wave 
That dances on the sea.' 

A girl is always like that, when everything's right with her 
"^'lOLET. But, surely, one must be sad sometimes ? 
L. Yes, Violet ; and dull sometimes, and stupid sometimes, 



HOME VIRTUES. 143 

and cross sometimes. What must be, must; but it is always 
either our own fault, or somebody else's. The last and worst 
thing that can be said of a nation is, that it has made its 
young girls sad, and weary. 

May. But I am sure I have heard a great many good 
people speak against dancing ? 

L. Yes, May; but it does not follow they were wise as 
well as good. I suppose they think Jeremiah hked better to 
have to write Lamentations for his people, than to have to 
write that promise for them, which everybody seems to hurry 
past, that they may get on quickly to the verse about Rachel 
weeping for her children ; though the verse they pass is the 
counter blessing to that one : ' Then shall the virgin rejoice 
in the dance ; and both young men and old together ; and I 
will turn their mourning into joy.' 

{The children get very serious, hut look at each other, 
as if pleased.) 

Mart. They understand now : but, do you know what you 
said next ? 

L. Yes ; I was not more than half asleep. I said their 
Becond virtue was dressing. 

Mart. Well ! what did you mean by that ? 

L. What do you mean by dressing ? 

Mart. Wearing fine clothes. 

L. Ah ! there's the mistake. J mean wearing plain ones 



144 HOME YIKTFES. 

Mart. Yes, I daresay! but that's not what girls under 
Btand by dressing, you know. 

L. I can't help that. If they understand by dressing, buy- 
ing dresses, perhaps they also understand by drawing, buying 
pictures. But when I hear them say they can draw, I under- 
stand that they can make a drawing ; and when I hear them 
say they can dress, I understand that they can make a dress 
and — which is quite as difficult — wear one. 

DoEA. I'm not sure about the making; for the wearmg, 
we can all wear them — out, before anybody expects it. 

Egypt {aside, to Jj.^piteously). Indeed I have mended that 
torn flounce quite neatly ; look if I haven't ! 

L. {aside, to Egypt). All right ; don't be afraid. {Aloud, 
to DoKA.) Ye», doubtless ; but you know that is only a slow 
way of w?2dressing. 

DoEA. Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we ? 

L. Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautifully — not 
finely, unless on occasion ; but then very finely and beauti- 
fully too. Also, you are to dress as many other people ag 
you can; and to teach them how to dress, if they don't know; 
and to consider every ill-dressed woman or child whom you 
see anywhere, as a personal disgrace ; and to get at them, 
somehow, until everybody is as beautifully dressed as birds 
{Silence ; the children draicing their breaths hard, as if 
they had come from under a shower hath.) 



HOME VIBTUES. 145 

L. {seeing objections begin to express themselves in tM 
eyes.) N'ow you needn't say you can't; for you can and 
it's what you T^'ere meant to do, always ; and to dress your 
houses, and your gardens, too ; and to do very little else, 
I believe, except singing ; and dancing, as we said, of course , 
and — one thing more. 

DoEA. Our third and last virtue, I suppose ? 

L. Yes ; on Violet's system of triplicities. 

Dora. Well, we are prejDared for anything now. What 
is it? 

L. Cooking. 

Dora. Cardinal, indeed ! If only Beatrice were here with 
her seven handmaids, that she might see what a fine eighth 
we had found for her ! 

Mary. And the interpretation ? What does ' cooking ♦ 
mean ? 

L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and 
of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen 
of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, 
and balms, and spices ; and of all that is healing and sweet 
in fields and groves, and savoury in meats; it means careful- 
fulness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, 
and readiness of appliance ; it means the economy of your 
great-grandmothers, and the science of modern chemists; it 

means much tasting, and no wasting ; it means Enghsb 

7 



146 HOME VIRTUES. 

thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality; and 
it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always, 
' ladies' — 'loaf-givers;' and, as you are to see, imperatively, 
that everybody has something pretty to put on, — so you are 
to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something 
nice to eat. 

(Another pause, and long drawn breath.) 

Dora [slowly recovering herself) to Egypt. We had 
better h^ve let him go to sleep, I think, after all ! 

L. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep now : 
for I haven't half done. 

Isabel (panic-strucTc). Oh! please, please! just one 
quarter of an hour. 

L. No, Isabel ; I cannot say what I've got to say, in 
a quarter of an hour ; and it is too hard for you, besides : — 
you would be lying awake, and trying to make it out, half 
the night. That will never do. 

Isabel. Oh, please ! 

L. It would please me exceedingly, mousie : but there are 
times when we must both be displeased; more's the pity. 
Lily may stay for half an hour, if she likes. 

Lily. I can't ; because Isey never goes to sleep, if she is 
waiting for me to come. 

Isabel. Oh, yes, Lily; I'll go to sleep to-night, I will, 
indeed. 



HOME VIRTUES. 147 

Lilt. Yes, it's very likely, Isey, with those fine round 
eyes ! ( To L.) You'll tell me something of what you've 
been saying, to-morrow, won't you? 

L. TvTo, I won't, Lily. You must choose. It s only in Miss * 
Edgeworth's novels that one can do right, and have one's 
cake and sugar afterwards, as well (not that I consider the 
dilemma, to-night, so grave). 

(Lily, sighing^ takes Isabel's hand.) 

Yes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the outcome of it, so, 
than if you were to hear all the talks that ever were talked, 
and all the stories that ever were told. Good night. 

{The door leading to the condem7ied cells of the Dormi- 
tory closes on Lilt, Isabel, Florrie, and other dimi- 
nutive and submissive victims) 

Jessie [after a pause). Why, I thought you were so fond 
of Miss Edgeworth ! 

L. So I am ; and so you ought all to be. I can read her 
over and over again, without ever tiring ; there's no one 
whose every page is so full, and so delightful ; no one who 
brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser people ; 
no one who tells you more truly how to do right. And it is 
very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very 
ideal of poetical justice done always to one's hand : — to have 
everybody found out, who tells lies ; and everybody decora'fe' 
ed with a red riband, who doesn't; and to see the good 



148 HOME VIRTUES. 

Laura, who gave aivay her half sovereign, receiving a grand 
ovation from an entire dinner party disturbed for the pur- 
pose ; and poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses pu/ple 
jars instead of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes 
or her bottle. But it isn't life : and, in the way children 
might easily understand it, it isn't morals. 

Jessie. How do you mean we might understand it ? 

L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right 
was to be done mainly because one was always rewarded for 
doing it. It is an injustice to her to say that : her heroines 
always do right simply for its own sake, as they should ; and 
her examples of conduct and motive are wholly admirable. 
But her representation of events is false and misleading. 
Her good characters never are brought into the deadly trial 
of goodness, — the doing right, and suffering for it, quite 
finally. And that is life, as God arranges it. ' Taking up 
one's cross ' does not at all mean having ovations at dinner 
parties, and being put over everybody else's head. 

DoEA, But what does it mean then ? That is just what 
we couldn't understand, when you were telling us about not 
sacrificing ourselves, yesterday. 

L. My dear, it means simply that you ai e to ^o the road 
which yoii see to be the straight one ; carrying whatever yor« 
find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly as you can ; 
without making faces, or calling people to come and look at 



HOME VIRTUES. 149 

jou. Above all, you are neither to load, nor unload, your- 
self; nor cut your cross to your own liking. Some people 
think it would be better for tbem to have it large; and many, 
that they could carry it much faster if it were small ; and even 
those who like It largest are usually very particular about 
ts being ornamental, and made of the best ebony. But all 
that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight ar^ 
you can ; and not think about what is upon it — above all, not 
to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential meaning 
of ' virtue' is in that straightness of back. Yes ; you may 
laugh, children, but it is. You know I was to tell you about 
the words that began with V. Sibyl, what does ' virtue' 
mean, literally ? 

Sibyl. Does it mean courage ? 

L. Yes ; but a particular kind of courage. It means cou 
rage of the nerve ; vital courage. That first syllable of it, if 
you look in Max Miiller, you will find really means 'nerve,' 
and from it come ' vis,' and ' vir,' and ' virgin' (through 
vireo), and the connected word ' virga' — ' a rod ;'— the green 
rod, or springing bough of a tree, being the type of perfect 
human strength, both in the use of it in the Mosaic story 
when it becomes a serpent, or strikes the rock; or when 
Aaron's bears its almonds; and in the metaphorical expres- 
sions, the 'Rod out of the stem of Jesse,' and the 'Man 
whose name is the Branch,' and so on And the essential 



150 HOME VIRTUES. 

idea of real virtue is tbat of a vital h iman strength, whicb 
instinctively, constantly, and without motive, does what is 
right. You must train men to this by habit, as you would 
the branch of a tree ; and give them instincts and manners 
(or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and courage. Once 
rightly trained, they act as they should, irrespectively of all 
motive, of fear, or of reward. It is the blackest sign of 
putrescence in a national religion, when men speak as if it 
were the only safeguard of conduct ; and assume that, but 
for the fear of being burned, or for the hope of being re- 
warded, everybody would pass their lives in lying, stealing, 
and murdering. I think quite one of the notablest historical 
events of this century (perhaps the very notablest), was that 
council of clergymen, horror-struck at the idea of any dimi- 
nution in our dread of hell, at which the last of English 
clergymen whom one would have expected to see in such a 
function, rose as the devil's advocate ; to tell us how impos- 
sible it was we could get on without him. 

Violet [after a pause). But, surely, if people weren't 
afraid — {hesitates again). 

L. They should be afraid of doing wrong, and of that only, 
my dear. Otherwise, if they only don't do wrong for fear 
of being punished, they have done wrcng in their hearts, 
already. 

Violet. Well, but surely, at least one ought to be afraid 



HOME VTRTTJES. 151 

of displeasing God ; and one's desire to please Hiua sboold 
be one's first motive ? 

L. He never would be pleased with us, if it were, my dear. 
When a father sends his son out into the world — suppose as 
an apprentice — fancy the boy'& coming home at night, and 
saying, ' Father, I could have robbed the till to-day ; but I 
didn't, because I thought you wouldn't like it.' Do you 
think the father would be particularly pleased ? 
(YiOLET is silent.) 

He would aEswer, would he not, if he were wise and good, 
' My boy, though you had no father, you must not rob tills ' ? 
And nothing is ever done so as really to please our Great 
Father, unless we would also have done it, though we had 
had no Father to know of it. 

Violet {after long pause). But, then, what continua) 
threatenings, and promises of reward there are ! 

L. And how vain both ! with the Jews, and with all of us. 
But the fact is, that the threat and promise are simply state- 
ments of the Divine law, and of its consequences. The fact 
is truly told you, — make what use you may of it : and as col- 
lateral warning, or encouragement, or comfort, the know- 
k ledge of future consequences may often be helpful to ns ; but 
helpful chiefly to the better state when we can act without 
reference to them. And there's nc measuring the poisoned 
influence of that notion of future reward on the mind oS 



152 HOME YTRTUES. 

Christian Earope, in the early ages. Half the monastic sys- 
tem rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition 
of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies 
and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity 
of pride, to begin with, in what is called ' giving one's self 
to God.' As if one had ever belonged to anybody else ! 

DoKA. But, surely, great good has come out of the monas 
tic system — our books, — our sciences — all saved by the 
monks ? 

L. Saved from what, my dear ? From the abyss of misery 
and ruin which that false Christianity allowed the whole 
active world to live in. When it had become the principal 
amusement, and the most admired art, of Christian men, to 
cut one another's throats, and burn one another's towns ; of 
course the few feeble or reasonable persons left, who desired 
quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got into cloisters ; and the 
gentlest, thoughtfullest, noblest men and women shut them- 
selves up, precisely where they could be of least use. They 
are very fine things, for us painters, now, — the towers and 
white arches upon the tops of the rocks ; always in places 
where it takes a day's climbing to get at them; but the 
intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is 
unspeakable. All the good people of the world getting 
themselves hung up out of the way of mischief, like Bailie 
Nicol Jarvie ; — poor little lambs, as it were, dangling there 



HOME VIRTUES. 153 

for the sign of the Golden Fleece ; or like Socrates in his 
basket in the ' Clouds ' ! (I must read you that bit ol 
Aristophanes again, by the way.) And believe me, children, 
I am no warped witness, as far as regards monasteries ; or if 
I am, it is in their favour. I have always had a strong lean* 
ing that way; and have pensively shivered with Augustinea 
at St. Bernard ; and happily made hay with Franciscans at 
Fesole ; and sat silent with Carthusians in their little gardens, 
south of Florence ; and mourned through many a day-dream, 
at Melrose and Bolton. But the wonder is always to me, not 
how much, but how little, the monks have, on the whole, 
done, with all that leisure, and all that good-will ! What non- 
sense monks characteristically wrote; — what little progress 
they made in the sciences to which they devoted themselves 
as a duty, — medicine especially ; — and, last and worst, what 
depths of degradation they can sometimes see one another, 
and the population round them, sink into; without either 
doubting their system, or reforming it ! 

{Seeing questions rising to lips.) Hold your little tongues, 
children ; it's very late, and you'll make me forget what I've 
to say. Fancy yourselves in pews, for five minutes. There's 
cne point of possible good in the conventual system, which is 
always attractive to young girls ; and the idea is a very 
dangerous one ; — the notion of a merit, or exalting virtue, 

consisting in a habit of meditation on the 'things above,' 

7* 



154 HOME VIETTJES. 

or tilings of the next world. N'ow it is quite true, that a 
person of beautiful mind, dwelling on whatever appears 
to them most desirable and lovely in a possible future^ 
will not only pass their time pleasantly, but will even 
acquire, at last, a vague and wildly gentle charm of manner 
and feature, which will give them an air of peculiar sanctity 
in the eyes of others. Whatever real or apparent good there 
may be in this result, I want you to observe, children, thai 
we have no real authority for the reveries to which it is 
owing. We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly 
world; except that it will be free from sorrow, and pure 
from sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the 
like, is accepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts 
themselves ; and whatever they pass their time in conceiving, 
whether of the happiness of risen souls, of their intercourse, 
or of the appearance and employment of the heavenly 
powers, is entirely the product of their own imagination; and 
as completely and distinctly a work of fiction, or romantic 
mvention, as any novel of Sir Walter Scott's. That the 
romance is founded on religious theory or doctrine ; — that no 
disagreeable or wicked persons are admitted into the story ; 
—and that the inventor fervently hopes that some portion of 
it may hereafter come true, does not in the least altor the 
real ir^ture of the efibrt or enjoyment. 
]S"ow, whatever indulgence may be granted to amiable 



HOME VIRTUES. 155 

ffCOple for pleasing themselves in tHs innocent way, it is 
beyond question, that to seclude themselves from tlie rough 
duties of life, merely to write religious romances, or, as in 
most cases, merely to dream them, without taking so much 
trouble as is implied in writing, ought not to be received as 
an act of heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting 
thus much, I have assumed that the fancies are just and 
beautiful, though fictitious. Now, what right have any of 
us to assume that our own fancies will assuredly be either 
the one or the other? That they delight us, and appear 
lovely to us, is no real proof of its not being wasted time to 
form tliem : and we may surely be led somewhat to distrust 
our judgment of them by observing what ignoble imagina- 
tions have sometimes sufiiciently, or even enthusiastically, 
occupied the hearts of others. The principal source of the 
spirit of religious contemplation is the East; now I have here 
in my hand a Byzantine image of Christ, which, if you will 
look at it seriously, may, I think, at once and for ever render 
you cautious in the indulgence of a merely contemplative 
habit of mind. Observe, it is the fashion to look at such a 
thing only as a piece of barbarous art; that is the smallest 
part of its interest. What I want you to see, is the baseness 
aud f ilseness of a religious state of enthusiasai, in which 
such a work could be dwelt upon ^dth pious pleasure. That 
a figure, with two small round black beads for eyes ; a gilded 



156 HOME VIRTUES. 

face, deep cut into horrible wrinkles; an open gash for a 
mouth, and a distorted skeleton for a body, wrapped about, 
to make it fine, with striped enamel of blue and gold ; — that 
Huch a figure, I say, should ever have been thought helpfu] 
towards the conception of a Redeeming Deity, may make 
you, I think, very doubtful, even of the Divine approval, — 
much more of the Divine inspiration, — of religious reverie in 
general. You feel, doubtless, that your own idea of Christ 
would be something very different from this ; but in what 
does the difference consist ? Not in any more divine author- 
ity in your imagination; but in the intellectual work of six 
intervening centuries ; which, simply, by artistic discipline, has 
refined this crude conception for you, and filled you, partly 
with an innate sensation, partly with an acquired knowledge, 
of higher forms, — which render this Byzantine crucifix as 
horrible to you, as it was pleasing to its maker. More ia 
required to excite your fancy; but your fancy is of no more 
autliority than his was : and a point of national art-skill is 
quite conceivable, in which the best we can do now will 
be as offensive to the religious dreamers of the more highly 
cultivated time, as this Byzantine crucifix is to you. 

Mary. But surely, Angelico will always retain his power 
I! per everybody? 

L. Yes, I should think, always ; as the gentle words of a 
child wiU: but you would be much surprised, Mary, if you 



HOME VIETUES. ' 157 

thoroughly took the paius to analyse, and had the perfect 
means of analysing, that power of Angelico, — to discover ita 
real sources. Of course it is natural, at first, to attribute it 
k) the pure religious fervour by which he was inspired ; but 
do you suppose Angelico was really the only monk, in all the 
Christian world of the middle ages, who laboured, in art, 
with a sincere religious enthusiasm ? 

Maky. !N'o, certainly not. 

L. Anything more frightful, more destructive of all reli- 
gious faith whatever, than such a supposition, could not be. 
And yet, what other monk ever 2^roduced such work? I 
have myself examined carefully upwards of two thousand 
illuminated missals, with especial view to the discovery of 
any evidence of a similar result upon the art, from the monk- 
ish devotion ; and utterly in vain. 

JVIary. But then, was not Fra Angelico a man of entirely 
separate and exalted genius ? 

L. Unquestionably ; and granting hhn to be that, the pecu- 
liar phenomenon in his art is, to me, not its loveliness, but 
its weakness. The effect of 'inspiration,' had it been real, 
on a man of consummate genius, should have been, one would 
have thought, to make everything that he did faultless and 
strong, no less than lovely. But of all men, deserving to be 
called ' great,' Fra Angelico permits to himself the least par 
donable faults, and the most palpab'e follies. There is evi 



158 ' HOME VIRTUES. 

dently within him a sense of grace, and power of invention, 
as great as Ghiberti's : — we are in the habit of attributing 
tbose high qualities to his religious enthusiasm ; but, if tbey 
were produced by that enthusiasm in him, they ought to bo 
produced by the same feelings in others ; and we see they 
are not. Whereas, comparing him with contemporary great 
artists, of equal grace and invention, one peculiar character 
remains notable in him — which, logically, we ought therefore 
to attribute to the religious fervour; — and that distinctive 
character is, the contented indulgence of his own weaknesses, 
and perseverance in his own ignorances. 

Mary. But that's dreadful! And what is the source 
of tbe peculiar charm which we all feel in his work? 

L. There are many sources of it, Mary; uniied and 
seeming like one. You would never feel that charm but 
in the work of an entirely good man; be sure of that; 
but tbe goodness is only the recipient and modifying ele- 
ment, not the creative one. Consider carefully what delights 
you in any original picture of Angelico's. You will find, 
for one minor thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of 
ornamental work. That is not Angelico's inspiration. It 
is the final result of the labour and thought of millions of 
artists, of all nations ; from the earliest Egyptian potters 
downwards — Greeks, Byzantines, Hindoos, Arabs, Gauls, and 
Northmen — all joining in the toil; and consummating it m 



HOME VIBTUES. 159 

Florence, in that century, with such (mbroidery of robe 
and inlaying of armour as had never been seen t ill then ; 
nor, probably, ever will be seen more. Augelico merely 
takes his share of this inheritance, and applies it in the 
tenderest way to subjects which are peculiarly acceptant 
of it. But the inspiration, if it exist anywhere, flashes on 
the knight's shield quite as radiantly as on the monk's 
picture. Examining farther into the sources of your emotion 
in the Angelico work, you will find much of the impression 
of sanctity dependent on a singular repose and grace of 
gesture, consummating itself in the floating, flying, and 
above all, in tlie dancing groups. That is not Angelico's 
inspiration. It is only a peculiarly tender use of systems 
of grouping which had been long before developed by 
Giotto, Memmi, and Orcagna; and the real root of it all 
is simply — What do you think, children? The beautiful 
dancing of the Florentine maidens ! 

Dora (indignant again). Now, I wonder what next! 
Why not say it all depended on Herodias' daughter, at 
once? 

L. Yes ; it is certainly a great argument against singing 
that there were once sirens. 

Doha. Well, it may be all very fine and philosophical, 
but shouldn't I just like to read you the end of the second 
volume of 'Modern Painters'! 



160 HOME VIRTUES. 

L. My dear, do you think any teacher could be worth 
your hstening to, or anybody else's listenmg to. who had 
learned nothing, and altered his mind in nothing, from 
seven and twenty to seven and forty? But that second 
volume is very good for you as far as it goes. It is a 
great advance, and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to 
be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to 
lead you, from Dutch cattle-pieces, and ruffian -pieces, to Fra 
Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, 
to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which 
may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the 
virtues of what you love : else you might come to love 
both alike; or even the w^eaknesses without the virtues. 
You might end by liking Overbeck and Cornelius as well 
as Angelico. However, I have perhaps been leaning a little 
too much to the merely practical side of things, in to-night's 
talk ; and you are always to remember, children, that I do 
not deny, though I cannot affirm, the spiritual advantages 
resulting, in certain cases, from enthusiastic religious reverie, 
and from the other practices of saints and anchorites. The 
evidence respecting them has never yet been honestly col- 
lected, much less dispassionately examined: but assuredly, 
there is in that direction a probability, and more than a 
probability, of dangerous error, while there is none what- 
ever in the practice of an active, cheerful, and benevolent 



HOME VIETUES. 161 

dfe. The hope of attaining a higher rohgious position, 
which induces us to encounter, for its exalted alternative^ 
tlie risk of unhealthy error, is often, as I said, founded 
more on pride than piety; and those who, in modest use- 
fulness, have accepted what seemed to them here the low- 
liest place in the kingdom of their Father, are not, I believe, 
the least likely to receive hereafter th 3 command, then 
unmistakable. 'Friend, go up higher.' 



fectuve 8. 
CBYSTAL CAPRICE. 



LECTURE Yin. 

CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

Foi*mal Lecture in Schoolroom^ after some practical 
examination of inhierals. 

L. We have seen enough, children, though very little of 
what might be seen if we had more time, of mineral struc- 
tures produced by visible opposition, or contest among 
elements ; structures of which the variety, however great, 
need not surprise us : for we quarrel, ourselves, for many 
and slight causes; — much more, one should think, may 
crystals, who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about 
it. But there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human 
ways in the varieties of form which appear owing to no 
antagonistic force ; but merely to the variable humour and 
caprice of the ciystals themselves : and I have asked you all 
to come into the schoolroom to-day, because, of com-se, this 
is a part of the crystal mind which must be peculiarly inter- 
esting to a feminine audience. (Great symptoms of disap- 
proval on the part of said audience.) ]N"ow, you need not 
pretend that it -will not interest you ; why should it not ? 
It is true that we men are never capricious ; but that only 
makes us the more dull and disagreeable. You, who are 



168 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

L. What do you mean by a group, and wliat by one 
crystal ? 

Dora {audibly aside, to Mary, who is brought to pause). 
You know you are never expected to answer, Mary. 

L. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by 
a group of people ? 

Mary. Three or four together, or a good many together, 
like the caps in these crystals. 

L. But when a great many persons get together they don't 
take the shape of one person ? 

(Mary still at pause.) 

Isabel. No, because they can't; but, you know the crystal* 
can; so why shouldn't they? 

L. Well, they don't; that is to say, they don't a.ways, 
nor even often. Look here, Isabel. 

Isabel. What a nasty ugly thing ! 

L. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beau- 
tiful crystals ; they are a little grey and cold in colour, but 
most of them are clear. 

Isabel, But they're in such horrid, horrid disorder ! 

L. Yes ; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things 
1 hat are naturally orderly. Some little girls' rooms are natu- 
ruily disovderlj, I suppose ; or I don't know how they could 
live in them, if they cry out so when they only see quarta 
crystals in confusion. 



CRYSTAL CAPKICE. 169 

Isabel. Oh ! but how come they to be like that ? 

L. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear peo« 
pie talking as if they thought order more wonderful than dis- 
order ! It is wonderful — as we have seen ; but to me, as to 
you, child, the supremely wonderful thing is that nature 
should ever be ruinous or wasteful, or deathful ! I look at 
this wild piece of crystallisation with endless astonishment. 

Mary. Where does it come from ? 

L. The Tete Noire of Chamonix. What makes it more 
strange is that it should be in a vein of fine quartz rock. If 
it were in a mouldering rock, it would be natural enough ; 
but in the midst of so fine substance, here are the crystals 
tossed in a heap ; some large, myriads small (almost aa 
small as dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified 
crowd, and glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, 
and heads ; some warped, and some pushed out and in, and 
all spoiled, and each spoiling the rest. 

Mary. And how flat they all are ! 

L. Yes ; that's the fashion at the Tete Noire. 

Mary. But surely this is ruin, not caprice ? 

L. I believe it is in great part misfortune ; and we will 

examme these crystal troubles in next lecture. But if you 

want to see the gracefullest and happiest caprices of which 

dust is capable, you must go to the Hartz ; not that I ever 

mean to go there myself, for I want to retain the romantia 

8 



1^0 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

feeling about the name ; and I have done myself some harm 
ah-eady by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the 
Brocken from the suburbs of Brunswick. But whether the 
mountains be picturesque or not, the tricks which the goblina 
(as I am told) teach the crystals in them, are incomparably 
pretty. They work chiefly on the mind of a docile, bluish- 
coloured, carbonate of lime; which comes out of a grey 
limestone. The goblins take the greatest possible care of its 
education, and see that nothing happens to it to hurt its tem- 
per ; and when it may be supposed to have arrived at the 
crisis which is, to a well brought up mineral, what presenta- 
tion at court is to a young lady — after which it is expected 
to set fashions — there's no end to its pretty ways of behav- 
ing. First it will make itself into pointed darts as fine ass 
hoar-frost ; here, it is changed into a white fur as fine as silk ; 
here into little crowns and circlets, as bright as silver ; as if 
for the gnome princesses to wear ; here it is in beautiful lit- 
tle plates, for them to eat off; presently it is in towers which 
they might be imprisoned in ; presently in caves and cells, 
where they may make nun-gnomes of themselves, and no 
gnome ever hear of them more ; here is some of it m sheaves. 
like corn ; here, some in drifts, like snow ; here, some in rays, 
like stars : and, though these are, all of them, necessarily, 
shapes that the mineral takes in other places, they are all 
taken here with such a grace that you recognise the high 



CEYSTAX CAPRICE. iVl 

caste and breeding of the crystals wherever you meet them ; 
and know at once they are Hartz-born. 

Of course, such fine things as these are only done by crys* 
tals which are perfectly good, and good-humoured ; and of 
course, also, there are ill-humoured crystals who torment 
each other, and annoy quieter crystals, yet without coming 
to anything like serious war. Here (for once) is some ill-dis- 
posed quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of iluor, in 
mere caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so 
wondcringly, just before putting my candle out, that I fell 
into another strange dream. But you don't care about 
dreams. 

DoEA. No ; we didn't, yesterday ; but you know we are 
made up of caprice ; so we do, to-day : and you must tell 
it us directly. 

L. Well, you see, Neith and her work were still much in 
my mind ; and then, I had been looking over these Hartz 
things for you, and thinking of the sort of grotesque sympa- 
thy there seemed to be in them with the beautiful fringe and 
pinnacle work of Northern architecture. So, when I fell 
asleep, I thought I saw Neith and St. Barbara talking 
together. 

DoEA. But what had St. Barbara to do with it ? * 

L. My dear, I am quite sure St. Barbara is the patronesB 
♦ Note V. 



172 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

of good architects : not St. Thomas, whatever the old build- 
ers thought. It might be very fine, according to the monks' 
notions, in St. Thomas, to give all his employer's money 
way to the poor : but breaches of contract are bad founda- 
tions ; and I believe, it was not he, but St. Barbara, who 
overlooked the work in all the buildings you and I care 
about. However that may be, it was certainly she whom I 
saw in my dream with N'eith. !N'eith was sitting weaving, 
and I thought she looked sad, and threw her shuttle slowly ; 
and St. Barbara was standing at her side, in a stifi" little 
gown, all ins and outs, and angles ; but so bright with em- 
broidery that it dazzled me whenever she moved; the train 
of it was just like a heap of broken jewels, it was so stiff, 
and full of corners, and so many-coloured, and bright. Her 
hair fell over her shoulders in long, delicate waves, from 
under a little three pinnacled crown, like a tower. She was 
asking Keith about the laws of architecture in Egypt and 
Greece ; and when N"eith told her the measures of the pyra- 
mids, St. Barbara said she thought they would have been 
better three-cornered : and when Neith told her the measures 
of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said she thought it ought to 
have had two transepts. But she was pleased when ]N"eith 
told her of the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maid- 
ens bearing its frieze: and then she thought that perhaps 
Neith would like to hear what sort of temples she was build- 



CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 173 

ing lierself, in the French valleys, and on the crags of the 
Rhine. So she began gossiping, just as one of you might 
to an old lady : and certainly she talked in the sweetest way 
in the world to Neith ; and explained to her all about crock- 
ets and pinnacles : and Neith sat, looking very grave ; and 
always graver as St. Barbara went on ; till at last, I'm sorry 
to say, St. Barbara lost her temper a little. 

May {ver^/ grave herself). ' St. Barbara ?' 

L. Yes, May. Why shouldn't she? It was very tu'e- 
some of 'Neith to sit looking like that. 

Mat. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint ! 

L. What's that, May? 

May. a saint ! A saint is — I am sure you know ! 

L. If I did, it would not make me sure that you knew 
too, May : but I don't. 

Violet (expressing the incredulity of the audie^ice). Oh, 
— sir ! 

L. That is to say, I know that people are called saints 
who are supposed to be better than others: but I don't 
know how much better they must be, in order to be saints ; 
nor how nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet not be quite 
one ; nor whether everybody who is called a saint was 
one ; nor whether everybody who isn't called a saint, isn't 
one. 

(General silence; the audience feeling themselves on 



174 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

the verge of the Infinities — and a little shocked — and. 
much 'puzzled by so many questions at once.) 

L. Besides, did you never hear that verse about being 
called to be saints ' ? 

Ma.y {repeats Rom. i. V). 

L. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are called to be 
that ? People in Rome only ? 

May. Everybody, I suppose, whom God loves. 

L. What ! little girls as well as other people ? 

Max-. All grown-up people, I mean. 

L. Why not little girls ? Are they wickeder "when they 
are little ? 

May. Oh, I hope not. 

L. Why not little girls, then ? 

(Pause.) 

Lily. Because, you know, we can't be worth anything if 
we're ever so good ; — I mean, if we try to be ever so good ; 
and we can't do difficult things — like saints. 

L. I am afraid, my dear, that old people are not more able 
or willing for their difficulties than you children are for yours. 
All T can say is, that if ever I see any of you, when you are 
seven or eight and twenty, knitting your brows over any 
work you want to do or to understand, as I saw you, Lily, 
knitting your brows over your slate this morning, 1 should 
think you very noble women. But — to come back to my 



CRYSTAL CAJ»KICB. 175 

dream — St. Barbara did lose her temper a little ; and I was 
not surprised. For you can't think how provoking Neith 
looiied, sitting there just like a statue of sandstone; only 
going on weaving, like a machine ; and never quickening the 
cast of her shuttle ; while St. Barbara was telling her so 
eagerly all about the most beautiful things, and chattering 
away, as fast as bells ring on Christmas Eve, till she saw that 
i^eith didn't care ; and then St. Barbara got as red as a rose, 
and stopped, just in time ; — or I think she would really have 
said something naughty. 

Isabel. Oh, please, but didn't Neith say anything then ? 

L. Yes. She said, quite quietly, ' It may be very pretty, 
my love ; but it is all nonsense.' 

Isabel. Oh dear, oh dear ; and then ? 

L. Well ; then I was a little angry myself, and hoped St. 
Barbara would be quite angry; but she wasn't. She bit het 
lips first; and then gave a great sigh — such a wild, sweet 
sigh — and then she knelt down and hid her face on ISTeith's 
knees. Then Neith smUed a little, and was moved. 

Isabel. Oh, I am so glad ! 

L. And she touched St. Barbara's forehead with a flower 
of white lotus ; and St. Barbara sobbed once or twice, and 
then said: 'If you only could see how beautiful it is, and 
how mucli it makes people feel what is good and lovely ; and 
if you could only hear the children singing in the Lady cha 



176 CEYSTAL CAPRICE. 

pels ! ' And Neith smiled, — but still sadly, — and sai 1, ' Ho\» 
do you know what I have seen, or heard, my love ? Do you 
think all those vaults and towers of yours have been bull 
without me ? There was not a pillar in your Giotto's Santa 
Maria del Fiore which I did not set true by my spearshaft as 
it rose. But this pinnacle and flame work which has set your 
little heart on fire, is all vanity ; and you will see what it will 
come to, and that soon ; and none will grieve for it more 
than I. And then every one will disbelieve your pretty 
symbols and types. Men must be spoken simply to, my 
dear, if you would guide them kindly, and long.' But St. 
Barbara answered, that, ' Indeed she thought every one liked 
her work,' and that 'the people of different towns were as 
eager about their cathedral towers as about their privileges 
or their markets ;' and then she asked Keith to come and 
build something with her, wall against tower; and *see 
whether the people will be as much pleased with your build- 
ing as with mine.' But ISTeith answered, ' I will not contend 
with you, my dear. I strive not with those who love me ; 
and for those who hate me, it is not well to strive wdth me, 
as weaver Arachne knows. And remember, child, that 
notnmg is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship ; 
nor nobly, which is done in pride.' 

Then St, Barbara hung her head quite down, and said 
she was very sorry she had been so foolish ; and kissed 



CRYSTAL CAPEICE. Ill 

Neitb ; and stood thinking a minute : and then her eyes got 
bright again, and she said, she would go directly and build a 
chapel with five windows in it ; four for the four cardinal 
virtues, and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the 
rest. And ISTeith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought ; 
certainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness for an in- 
stant ; then she said, ' Well, love, build it, but do not put so 
many colours into your windows as you usually do; else 
no one will be able to see to read, inside : and when it is 
built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an arch- 
bishop.' St. Barbara started a little, I thought, and turned 
as if to say something ; but changed her mind, and gathered 
up her train, and went out. And Neith bent herself again to 
her loom, in which she was weaving a web of strange dark 
colours, I thought ; but perhaps it was only after the glitter- 
ing of St. Barbara's embroidered train : and I tried to make 
out the figures in JSTeith's web, and confused myself among 
them, as one always does in dreams ; and then the dream 
changed altogether, and I found myself, all at once, among a 
crowd of little Gothic and Egyptian spirits, who were quar- 
-'elling : at least the Gothic ones were trying to quarrel; for 
the Egyptian ones only sat with their hands on their knees, and 
their aprons sticking out very stiffly ; and stared. And after a 
while I began to understand what the matter was. It seemed 

that some of the troublesome building imps, who meddle and 

8* 



178 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

make continually, even in the best Gothic work, had leen 
listening to St. Barbara's talk with IsTeith; and had maele up 
their minds that Neith had no workpeople who could build 
against them. They were but dull imps, as you may fancy 
by their thinking that ; and never had done much, except 
disturbing the great Gothic building angels at their work, 
and playing tricks to each other ; indeed, of late they had 
been living years and years, like bats, up under the cornices 
of Strasbourg and Cologne cathedrals, with nothing to do 
but to make mouths at the people below. However, they 
thought they knew everything about tower building; and 
those who had heard what IN'eith said, told the rest; and 
they all flew down directly, chattering in German, like jack- 
daws, to show N'eith's people what they could do. And they 
had found some of Keith's old workpeople somewhere near 
Sais, sitting in the sun, with their hands on their knees ; and 
abused them heartily: and !N"eith's people did not mind at 
first, but, after a while, they seemed to get tired of the noise; 
and one or two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their measur 
ing rods, and said, ' If St. Barbara's people liked to build 
with them, tower against pyramid, they would show them 
how to lay stones.' Then the Gothic little spirits threw a 
great many double somersaults for joy; and put the tips of 
their tongues out slily to each other, on one side ; and I heard 
the Egyptians say, ' tliey must be some new kind of frog— 



CRYSTAL CAPEIOE. 1^9 

ehey didn't think there was much building in the n? How- 
ever, the stiff old workers took their rods, as I said, and 
measured out a square space of sand; but as soon as tho 
German spirits saw that, they declared they wanted ^vactiy 
that bit of ground to build on, themselves. Then the Egyp- 
tian builders offered to go farther off, and the German ones 
said, ' Ja wolil.' But as soon as the Egyptians had measured 
out another square, the little Germans said they must have 
some of that too. Then ISTeith's peo})le laughed ; and said, 
* they might take as much as they liked, but they would not 
move the plan of their pyramid again.' Then the little G»^ 
mans took three pieces, and began to buiLl three spires 
directly; one large, and two little. And when the Egyptians 
saw they had fairly begun, they laid their foundation al] 
round, of large square stones : and began to build, so steadily 
that they had like to have swallowed up the three little Ger- 
man spires. So when the Gothic spirits saw that, they built 
their spires leaning, like the tower of Pisa, that they mig'iit 
stick out at the side of the pyramid. And Keith's people 
stared at them ; and thought it very clever, but very wrong; 
and on they went, in their own v/ay, and said nothing. Then 
the little Gothic spirits w^ere terribly provoked because they 
could not spoil the shape of the pyramid ; and they sat down 
all along the ledges of it to make faces ; but that did no good. 
Then they ran to the corners, and put theii* elbows on theii 



180 CEYSTAL CAPRICE. 

knees, and stuck themselves out as far as they couUl, and 
made more faces ; but that did no good, neither. Then ihey 
looked up to the sky, and opened their mouths wide, and 
gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and wondered 
when it would rain ; but that did no good, neither. And all 
the while the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step 
patiently. But when the Gothic ones looked, and saw how 
high they had got, they said, 'Ach, Himrael!* and flew 
down in a great black cluster to the bottom ; and swept out 
a level spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and 
began building a tower straight uj^, as fast as they could. 
And the Egyj)tians stood still again to stare at them ; for the 
Gothic spirits had got quite into a passion, and were really 
working very wonderfully. They cut the sandstone into strips 
as fine as reeds ; and put one reed on the top of another, so that 
you could not see where they fitted: and they twisted them 
in and out like basket work, and knotted them into likenesses 
of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each other ; and 
up they went, and up still, and they made spiral staircases at 
the corners, for the loaded workers to come up by (for I saw 
they were but weak imps, and could not fly with stones on 
their backs), and then they made traceried galleries for them 
to run round by ; and so up again ; with finer and finer work, 
tin the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the thing 
for a tower or a pillar: and I heard them saying to cne 



CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 181 

another, ' It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks ; and if it 
were not for the ugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if 
they were going to build it all with pillars as big as that !' 
But in a minute afterwards, — just as the Gothic spirits had 
carried their work as high as the upper course, but three or 
four, of the pyramid — the Egyptians called out to them to 
'mind what they were about, for the sand was running away 
from under one of their tower corners.' But it was too late 
to mind what they were about ; for, in another instant, the 
whole tower sloped aside ; and the Gothic imps rose out of 
it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud ; but screaming worse 
than any puffins you ever heard : and down came the tower, 
all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right on the 
flank of the pyramid; against which it snapped short off. 
And of course that waked me ! 

Majit. "What a shame of you to have such a dream, after 
all you have told us about Gothic architecture ! 

L. If you have understood anything I ever told you about 
it, you know that no architecture was ever corrupted more 
miserably; or abolished more justly by the accomplishment 
of its own follies. Besides, even in its days of power, it was 
subject to catastrophes of this kind. I have stood too often, 
mourning, bv the grand fragment of the apse of Beauvais, 
not to have that fact well burnt into me. Still, you must 
have seen, surely, that these imps were of the Flamboyant 



182 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

school; or, at least, of the German schools correspondent 
with it in extravagance. 

Mary. But, thea, where is the crystal about which you 
dreamed all this ? 

L. Here ; but I suppose httle Pthah has touched it again, 
for it is very small. But, you see, here is the pyramid, built 
of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up ; and here 
are the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which 
have set themselves, at the same time, on the same founda- 
tion ; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out 
obliquely at the side : and here is one great spire of quartz 
which seems as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a 
little way off; and then had fallen down against the pyramid 
base, breaking its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystal- 
lised horizontally, and terminated imperfectly : but, then, by 
what caprice does one crystal form horizontally, when all 
the rest stand upright ? But this is nothing to the phanta- 
sies of fluor, and quartz, and some other such companions, 
when they get leave to do anything they like. I could show 
you fifty specimens, about every one of which you might 
fancy a new fairy tale. INTot that, in truth, any crystals ^e{ 
leave to do quite what they like; and many of them are 
eadly tried, and have little time for caprices — poor things ! 

Mary. I thought they always looked as if they were eithei 
in play or in mischief ! What trials hav e they ? 



CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 183 

L. Trials much like our own. Sickness, and starvation; 
fevers, and agues, and i^alsy; oppression; and old age, and 
the necessity of passing avvay in their time, like all else. If 
there's any pity in you, you must come to-morrow, and tak 
some part in tliese crystal griefs. 

Dora. I am sui'e we shall cry till our eyes are red. 

L. Ah, you may laugh, Dora : but I've been made grave, 
not once, nor twice, to see that even crystals * cannot choose 
but be old ' at last. It may be but a shallow proverb of the 
Justice's; but it is a shrewdly wide one. 

Dora (2oensive^ for once). I suppose it is very dreadful 
to be old ! But then {prightening agai.i), what should we 
do without our dear old friends, and our nice old lecturers ? 

L. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I 
know of 

Dora. And if they all meant as little what they say, -should 
they not deserve it ? But we'll come — we'll come, and i=vy. 



Cccttire 9. 
CRYSTAL SOEBOWS. 



LECTURE IX. 

CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
Wor'king Lecture in Schoolroom, 

L, We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystal? 
might live, and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, 
according to their characters, without interruption from any- 
thing else. But so far from this being so, nearly all crystals, 
whatever their characters, have to live a hard life of it, and 
meet with many misfortunes. If we could see far enough, 
we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices were 
misfortunes : but to-day I want you to see what sort of 
troubles the best crystals have to go through, occasionally, 
by no fault of their own. 

This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very 
^M\v pretty black things in the world, is called ' Tourmaline.' 
It may be transparent, and green, or red, as well as black; 
and tlien no stone can be prettier (only, all the light that 
gits into it, I believe, comes out a good deal the wcrse ; and 
is noi itself again for a long while). But this is the com 
nionest state of it, — opaque, and as black as jet. 

Mary. What does ' Tourmaline' mean ? 



188 CRYSTAL SORROWS. 

L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don't know Ceylanese 5 
but we may always be thankful for a graceful word, what 
ever it means. 

Mary. And what is it made of? 

L. A little of everything; there's always flint, and clay, 
and magnesia in it; and the black is iron, according to itn 
fancy ; and there's boracic acid, if you know what that is ; 
and if you don't, I cannot tell you to-day; and it doesn't 
signify : and there's potash, and soda ; and, on the whole, the 
chemistry of it is more like a mediaeval doctor's prescription, 
than the making of a respectable mineral : but it may, per- 
haps, be owing to the strange complexity of its make, that 
it has a notable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most 
interesting of minerals. You see these two crystals are broken 
right across, in many places, just as if they had been shafts 
of black marble fallen from a ruinous temple ; and here they 
lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragment succeeding fragment, 
keeping the line of the original crystal, while the quartz fills 
up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick ol 
doing this, more than any other mineral I know: here is 
another bit which I picked up on the ghicier of Macugnaga; 
it is broken, like a pillar built of very flat broad stones, into 
about thirty joints, and all these are heaved and warped 
away from each other sideways, almost into a line of steps j 
and then all is filled up with quartz paste. And here, lastly, 



CETSTAL SOEEOWS. 189 

is a green Indian piece, in which the pillar is first disjointed, 
ar.d then wrung round into the shape of an S. 

AIaet. How can this have been done ? 

L. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been 
done; the difficulty is not to account for the doing of it; 
but for the showing of it in some crystals, and not in others. 
You never by any chance get a quartz crystal broken or 
twisted in this way. If it break or twist at all, which it does 
sometimes, like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own will or 
fault ; it never seems to have been passively crushed. But, 
for the forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourma- 
line, — ^here is a stone which will show you multitudes of them 
m operation at once. It is known as 'brecciated agate,' 
beautiful, as you see ; and highly valued as a pebble : 
yet, so far as I can read or hear, no one has ever looked 
at it with the least attention. At the first glance, you see it 
is made of very fine red striped agates, which have been 
broken into small pieces, and fastened together again by 
paste, also of agate. There would be nothing wonderful 
in this, if this were all. It is well known that by the move- 
ments of strata, portions of rock are often shattered to 
pi3ces :— well known also that agate is a deposit of flint by 
fli^ater under certain conditions of heat and pressure: there is, 
therefore, nothing wonderful in an agate's being broken; 
aad nothing wonderful in its being mended with the 



190 CRYSTAL SORROWS. 

solution out of whicli it was itself originally congealed. 
And wltb this explanation, most people, looking at a brec 
elated agate, or brecciated anytliing, seem to be satisfied 
I was so myself, for twenty years ; but, lately happening 
to stay for some time at the Swiss Baden, where the 
beach of the Limmat is almost wholly composed of brec- 
ciated limestones, I began to examine them thoughtfully ; 
and perceived, in the end, that they were, one and all, 
knots of as rich mystery as any poor little human brain 
was ever lost in. That piece of agate in your hand, Mary, 
will show you many of the common phenomena of breccias ; 
but you need not knit your brows over it in that way; 
depend upon it, neither you nor I shall ever know anything 
about the way it was made, as long as we live. 

Dora. That does not seem much to depend upon. 

L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion 
of the extent and the unconquerableness of our ignorance, it 
is a very broad and restful thing to depend upon : you can 
throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a cloud, to feast with 
the gods. You do not thenceforward trouble yourself, — nor 
any one else, — with theories, or the contradiction of theories; 
you neither get headache nor heartburning ; and you never 
more waste your poor little store of strength, or allowance 
of time. 

However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, 



CRYSTAL SOEEOWS. 191 

which 1 can tell you; and then you may look at it in a 
pleasant wonder as long as you like ; pleasant wonder is no 
loss of time. 

First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow ; it is slowly 
wi'ung, or ground, to pieces. You can only with extreme 
dimness conceive the force exerted on mountains in transi- 
tional states of movement. You have all read a little geo- 
logy ; and you know how coolly geologists talk of mountains 
being raised or depressed. Tiiey talk coolly of it, because 
they are accustomed to the fact ; but the very universality of 
the fact prevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the con- 
ditions of force involved. You know I was li\ing last year 
in Savoy; my house was on the back of a sloping mountain, 
which rose gradually for two miles, behind it ; and then fell 
at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, going down 
three thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. ]^ow that 
whole group of chffs had simply been torn away by sheer 
stiength from the rocks below, as if the whole mass had 
been as soft as biscuit. Put four or five captains' biscuits on 
the floor, on the top of one another ; and try to break them 
all in half, not by bending, but by holding one half down, 
and tearing the other halves straight up ; — of course you wiU 
not be able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend the 
sort of force needed. Then, fancy each captains' biscuit a 
bed of roclv, six or seven hundred feet thick ; and the whol* 



192 CRYSTAL SOEEOWS. 

mass torn straight through ; and one half heaved up three 
thousand feet, grinding against the other as it rose, — and you 
will have some idea of the making of the Mont Saleve. 

Mat. But it must crush the rocks all to dust I 

L. !N'o ; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too 
great ; probahly the heat developed also so great that the 
rock is made partly ductile ; but the worst of it is, that we 
never can see these parts of mountains in the state they were 
left in at the time of their elevation; for it is precisely in 
these rents and dislocations that the crystalline power prin- 
cij^ally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and 
wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds ; nay, the 
torture and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring ont 
its full energy ; for you only find the crystalline living power 
fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many. 

Dora. If you please, sir, — would you tell us — what are 
'faults'? 

L. You never heard of such things ? 

Dora. Never in all our lives. 

L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is 
iiUerrupted by another troublesome little vein, which stops it, 
uixl puts it out, so that it has to begin again in another place 
—that is called a fault. I always thmk it ought to be called 
the fault of the vein that interrupts it ; but the miners alwayi 
call it the fault of the vein that is interrupted. 



CRYSTAI. SOHEOWS. 193 

DoEA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off. 

L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, 
whatever good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have 
a bad habit, when they are once interrupted, of never asking 
^ Where was I?' 

Doha. When the two halves of the dining table cam 
separate, yesterday, was that a ' fault ' ? 

L. Yes ; but not the table's. However, it is not a bad 

illustration, Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted 

by a fissure, but remain at the same level, like the two halves 

of the table, it is not called a fault, but only a fissure ; but if 

one half of the table be either tilted higher than the other, or 

pushed to the side, so that the two parts will not fit, it is a 

fault. You had better read the chapter on faults in Jukes's 

Geology; then you will know all about it. And this rent 

that I am telhng you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, 

to which are owing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all 

great mountain chains. Wherever you see a precipice on 

any scale of real magnificence, you will nearly always find it 

owing to some dislocation of this kind; but the point of chief 

wonder to me, is the delicacy of the touch by which these 

gigantic rents have been apparently accomplished. jSTote, 

however, that we have no clear evidence, hitherto, of the 

time taken to produce any of them. We know that a change 

of temperature alters the position and the angles of the 
9 



194 CRYSTAL SOEEOWS. 

atoms of crystals, and also the entire bulk of rocks. Wa 
know that in all volcanic, and the greater part of all subter- 
ranean, action, temperatures are continually changing, and 
therefore masses of rock must be expanding or contractmg, 
with infinite slowness, but with infinite force. This pressure 
must result in mechanical strain somewhere, both in their 
own substance, and in that of the rocks surrounding them ; 
and we can form no conception of the result of irresistible 
pressure, aj^plied so as to rend and raise, with imperceptible 
slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet in thickness. 
We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and 
stone; and we can't get them tried, because Christian crea- 
tures never will seriously and sufficiently spend money, 
except to find out the shortest ways of killing each other. 
But, besides this slow kind of pressure, there is evidence of 
more or less sudden violence, on the same terrific scale ; and, 
through it all, the wonder, as I said, is always to me the 
delicacy of touch. I cut a block of the Saleve limestone 
from the edge of one of the principal faults which have 
formed the precipice ; it is a lovely compact limestone, and 
he fault itself is filled up with a red breccia, formed of the 
crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented by a rich red 
crystalline paste. I have had the piece I cut from it smooth- 
ed, and polished across the junction ; heie it is; and you may 
now pass your soft little fingers over the surface, without sc 



CRYSTAI. SOEEOWS. 105 

much as feeling the place where a rock which all the hills of 
England might have been sunk in the body of, and not a 
summit seen, was torn asunder through that whole thickiiess, 
as a thin dress is torn when you tread upon it. 

(The audience examine the stone^ and touch it timidly y 
hut the matter remains inconceivable to them.) 

Maet {struck hy the beauty of the stone). But this is 
almost marble ? 

L. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the 
business, to my mind, is that these stones, which men have 
been cutting into slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament 
their principal buildings with, — and which, under the general 
name of ' marble,' have been the delight of the eyes, and the 
wealth of architecture, among aU civilised nations, — are pre- 
cisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth- 
agonies have been chiefly struck ; and there is not a purple 
vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of 
their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, 
and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind ! Fancy 
reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand 
years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and 
educate themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of 
imitating these veins by dexterous painting ; and never a 
curious soul of them, all that while, asks, ' What painted the 
rocks?' 



196 CEYSTAL SOKROWS. 

{The audienci look dejected^ and ashamed of thet%- 

selves.) 
The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our 
lives ; and it is only by pinching ourselves very hard that we 
ever come to see, or understand, anything. At least, it is not 
always we who pinch ourselves; sometimes other people 
pinch us ; which I suppose is very good of them, — or other 
things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But it is 
a sad life ; made up chiefly of naps and pinches. 

(Some of the audience^ on this, appearing to think that 

the others require pinching, the Lectueer changes tha 

subject.) 
ISTow, however, for once, look at a piece of marble care- 
fiiUy, and think about it. You see this is one side of the 
fault ; the other side is down or up, nobody knows where ; 
but, on this side, you can trace the evidence of the dragging 
and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble, the 
ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there 
half an inch, away from each other ; and you see the exact 
places where they fitted, before they were torn separate ; and 
you see the rents are now all filled up with the sanguine paste, 
full of the broken pieces of the rock; the paste itself 
seems to have been half melfeed, and partly to have also 
melted the edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have 
crystallised with them, and round them. And the breociated 



CRYSTAL SOEEOWS. 197 

agate I first showed you contains exactly the same pheno- 
mena; 'c4 zoned crystallisation going on amidst the cemented 
fragments, partly altering the structure of those fragments 
themselves, and subject to continual change, either in the 
intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materials 
submitted to it; — so that, at one time, gravity acts upon 
tbem, and disposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them 
to droop in stalactites ; and at another, gravity is entirely 
defied, and the substances in solution are crystallised in 
bands of equal thickness on every side of the cell. It would 
require a course of lectures longer than these (I have a great 
mind, — you have behaved so saucily — to stay and give 
them) to describe to you the phenomena of this kind, in 
agates and chalcedonies only ; — nay, there is a single sarco- 
phagus in the British Museum, covered with grand sculpture 
of the 18th dynasty, which contains in the magnificent 
breccia (agates and jaspers imbedded in porphyry), out 
of which it is hewn, material for the thought of years ; and 
record of the earth-sorrow of ages in comparison with the 
duration of which, the Egyptian letters tell us but the history 
of the evening and morning of a day. 

Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most ot their past 
history; but all crystalhsation goes on under, and partly 
records, circumstances of this kind — circumstances of infi« 
nite variety, but always involving difficulty, interruption, an^ 



I 98 CRTSTAIi SOEROWS. 

change of condition at different times. Observe, first, you 
have the whole mass of the rock in motion, either contracting 
itself, and so gradually widening the cracks ; or being 
compressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing theii' 
edges ; — and, if one part of its substance be softer, at the 
given temperature, than another, probably squeezing that 
softer substance out into the veins. Then the veins them- 
selves, when the rock leaves them open by its contraction, 
act with various power of suction upon its substance ; — ^by 
capillary attraction when they are fine, — by that of pure 
vacuity when they are larger, or by changes in the consti- 
tution and condensation of the mixed gases with which 
they have been originally filled. Those gases themselves 
may be supplied in all variation of volume and power from 
below ; or, slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks them- 
selves ; and, at changing temreratures, must exert relatively 
changing forces of decomposition and combination on the 
walls of the veins they fill ; while water, at every degree of 
heat and pressure (from beds of everlasting ice, alternate 
with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, or white 
Lot, steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and thrills, from 
crag to crag ; and breathes from pulse to pulse of foaming 
or fiery arteries, whose beating is felt through chains of the 
great islands of the Indian seas, as your own pulses lift youi 
bracelets, and makes whcle kingdoms of the world quivei 



CETSTAI. SOEEOWS. 199 

in deadly earthquake, as if they were light as aspeu leaves. 
And, remember, the poor little crystals have to live theii 
lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all tliis. a>^ 
best tliey may. They are wonderfully like human creatures, 
— ^forget all that is going on if they don't see it, however 
dreadful; and never think what is to happen to-morrow 
They are spiteful or loving, and indolent or painstaking, and 
orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever of the lava 
or the flood which may break over them any day ; and evapo- 
rate them into air-bubbles, or wash them into a solution of 
salts. And you may look at them, once understanding the 
surrounding conditions of their fate, with an endless interest. 
You will see crowds of unfortunate little crystals, who have 
been forced to constitute themselves in a hurry, their 
dissolving element being fiercely scorched away; you will 
see them doing their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. 
Then you will find indulged crystals, who have had centuries 
to form themselves in, and have changed their mind and 
ways continually; and have been tired, and taken heart 
again ; and have been sick, and got well again ; and thought 
they would try a different diet, and then thought better of 
it ; and made but a poor use of their advantages, after all. 
And others you will see, who have begun life as wicked 
crystals ; and then have been impressed by alarming circum- 
stances, and have become converted crystals, and behaved 



200 CRYSTAL BORROWS. 

amazingly for a little while, and fallen av^^ay again, ani 
ended, but discreditably, perhaps even in decomposition; 
so that one doesn't know what will become of them. And 
sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that look as soft 
as velvet, and are deadly to all near them ; and sometimes 
you will see deceitful crystals, that seem flint-edged, like oui 
little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here, (hush ! Dora,) 
and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness and 
truth are needed. And sometimes you will see little child- 
crystals put to school like school-girls, and made to stand in 
rows ; and taken the greatest care of, and taught how to 
hold themselves up, and behave ; and sometimes you will 
see unhappy little child-crystals left to lie about in the dirt, 
and pick up their living, and learn manners, where they can. 
And sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, 
like great capitalists and little labourers ; and politico- 
economic crystals teaching the stupid ones how to eat each 
other, and cheat each other; and foolish crystals getting in 
the way of wise ones ; and impatient crystals spoiling the 
plans of patient ones, irreparably ; just as things go on in the 
world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals 
taking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in 
their minds ; and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of 
others; and hermit-crab crystals living in the shells of othe-s; 
and parasite crystals living on the means of others ; and 



CRYSTAL SOEBOWS. 201 

courtier crystals glittering in attendance upon others ; ancl 
all these, besides the two great companies of war and peace, 
vvlio ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or resolutely to 
defend. And for the close, you see the broad shadow and 
deadly force of inevitable fate, above all this : you see the 
multitudes of crystals whose time has come ; not a set time, 
as with us, but yet a time, sooner or later, when they 
all must give up their crystal ghosts : — when the strength by 
which they grew, and the breath given them to breathe, pass 
away from them ; and they fail, and are consumed, and 
vanish away; and another generation is brought to life, 
framed out of their ashes. 

Maey. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, 
down into the very dust, of that verse : ' The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain ' ? 

L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary : at least, the 
evidence tends to show that there is much more pleasure 
than pain, as soon as sensation becomes possible. 

Ltjcilla. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, 
it must be pain ? 

L. Yes; if we are told; and told in the way you mean, 

Lucilla; but nothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. 

Unmitigated pain would kill any of us in a few hours ; pain 

equal to our pleasures would niake us loathe life ; the word 

itself cannot be applied to tlie lower conditions of matter 

9* 



202 CRYSTAL SORROWS. 

iu Its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask ma 
about this. To-morrow is to be kept for questions and 
difficulties ; let us keep to the plain facts to-day. There is 
yet one group of facts connected with this rending of the 
rocks, which I especially want you to notice. You know, 
when you have mended a very old dress, quite meritoriously. 
tin it won't mend any more 

Egypt {interrupting). Could not you sometimes take gen- 
tlemen's work to illustrate by ? 

L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt ; 
and when it is useful, girls cannot easily understand it. 

Dora. I am sure we should understand it better than 
gentlemen understand about sewing. 

L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under 
correction, when I touch upon matters of the kind too high 
for me ; and besides, I never intend to speak otherwise than 
respectfully of sewing; — ^though you always seem to think 
I am laughing at you. In all seriousness, illustrations fron» 
sewing are those which i^eith likes me best to use ; and 
which young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What 
do you think the beautiful word ' wife' conies from? 

Dora {tossing her head). I don't think it is a particularly 
beautiful word. 

L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think 'bride' 
sounds better; but wife's the word for wear, depend upon 



OETSTAL SOEROWS. 20B 

It. It is the great word in wtich the English and Latin 
languages conquer the French and the Greek. I hope the 
French will some day get a word for it., yel, instead of their 
dreadful ' femme.' But wliat do you think it comes from ? 

Dora. I never did think about it? 

L. l!^or you, Sibyl ? 

Sibyl. ISTo ; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there. 

L. Yes ; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they 
usually do mean something. Wife means ' weaver.' You 
have all the right to call yourselves little ' housewives,' when 
you sew neatly. 

Dora. But I don't think we want to call ourselves 'little 
housewives.' 

L. You must either be house- Wives, or house-Moths ; 
remember that. In the deep sense, you must either weave 
men's fortunes, and embroider them; or feed upon, and bring 
them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewinf^ 
illustration, and help me out with it. 

Dora. Well, we'll hear it, under protest. 

L. You have heard it before ; but with reference to othei 
matters. When it is said, ' no man putteth a piece of new 
cloth on an old garment, else it taketh from the old,' does 
it not moan that the new piece tears the old one away at the 
eewn edge ? 

Dora. Yes ; certainly. 



204 CRYSTAIi SOKKOWS. 

L. Aud when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, 
does not the whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears 
again ? 

Dora. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any 
more. 

L. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that : but the same 
thing happens to them continually. I told you they were 
full of rents, or veins. Large masses of mountain are some- 
times as full of veins as your hand is ; and of veins nearly as 
fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but 
a crack or cleft). ISTow these clefts are mended, usually, with 
the strongest material the rock can find ; and often literally 
with threads ; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw 
the substance it is filled with into fibres, which cross from 
one side of it to the other, and are partly crystalline; so that, 
when the crystals become distinct, the fissure has often 
exactly the look of a tear, brought together with strong cross 
stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has been 
fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of tem- 
perature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again. 
Then the old vein must open wider; or else another open 
elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do so at its centre; 
but it constantly happens, with well filled veins, that the 
cross stitches are too strong to break ; the walls of the vein, 
instead, are torn away by them; and another little supple- 



CRYSTAL SOREOWS. 205 

mentary vein — often three or four successiyely — will I e thus 
formed at the side of the first. 

JNLajiy. That is really very much like our work. Biit what 
da the mountains use to sew with ? 

L. Quartz, whenever they can get it : pure limestones are 
obliged to be content with carbonate of lime; but most 
mixed rocks can find some quartz for themselves. Here is a 
piece of black slate from the Buet : it looks merely like dry 
dark mud ; — you could not think there was any quartz in it ; 
but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with beautiful 
white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that 
you can break it like flint, in the mass ; but, where it has 
been exposed to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is 
shown : and, more than that, you see the threads have been 
all twisted and pulled aside, this way and the other, by 
the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein as it 
widened. 

Mart. It is wonderful ! But is that going on still ? Are 
the mountains being torn and sewn together again at this 
moment ? 

L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly 

« 

(though geologists differ on this matter), not with the 
violence, or on the scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. 
All things seem to be tending tow^ards a condition of at least 
temporary rest; and that groaning and travailirg of tht 



206 CEYSTAL SOEEOWS. 

creation, as, assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not, in the full 
sense, ' until now.' 

Mary I want so much to ask you about that ! 

Sibyl. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great 
many other things besides. 

L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new 
ideas as are good for any of you at present : and I should 
not like to burden you with more; but I must see that 
those you have are clear, if I can make them so; so we 
will have one more talk, for answer of questions, mainly. 
Think over all the ground, and make your difficulties tho- 
roughly presentable. Then we'll see what we can make of 
them. 

Dora. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and 
cm'tsey as they come in. 

L. N*^ -v/, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had 
enough of them the day you all took a fit of reverence, and 
curtsied me out of the room. 

Dora. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, 
at once, by that fit. We have never been the least respect- 
ful since. And the difficulties will only curtsey themselves 
out of the room, I hope ; — come in at one door — vanish at 
the other, 

L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties 
were tauoht to behave so! However, one can generally 



CRYSTAL SOEEOWS 20 *? 

make somithing, or (better still) nothing, or at least less, 
of them, if they thoroughly know their own minds; and 
your difficulties — I must say that for you, children, — 
generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves. 

DoKA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people 
would not allow so much as that girls had any minds tc 
know. 

L. They wUl at least admit that you have minds to 
change, Dora. 

Maky. You might have left us toe last speech, without 
a retouch. But we'll put our little minds, such as they are, 
ui the best trim we can, foi to-morrow. 



€tttnvt 10. 

THi: CRYSTAL REST, 



LECTURE X. 

THE CRYSTAL REST 

Evening, The fireside. L.'s arm-chair in the comfortable^ 

corner. 

L. {perceiving various arrangements being made of foot 
itoolf cushion, screen, and the like.) Yes, yes, it's all verj 
fine ! and I am to sit here to be asked questions till supper- 
time, am I ? 

Dora. I don't think you can have any supper to-night: 
— we've got so much to ask. 

Lily. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you 
know, so nicely ! 

L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with com])etitive 
examuiation going on over one's plate; the competition 
being among the examiners. Really, now that I know 
what teasing things girls are, I don't so much wonder 
that pt'ople used to put up patiently with the dragons who 
took them for supper. But I can't help myself, I supp()se ; 
— no thanks to St. George. Ask away, children, and I'D 
answer as civilly as may be. 



212 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

Dj>ea. We don't so much care about being answered 
civilly, as about not being asked things back again. 

L. ' Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.' There 
shall be no requitals. 

DoEA. Well, then, first of all — What shall we ask first, 
Mary ? 

Mary. It does not matter. I think all the questions 
come into one, at last, nearly. 

Dora. You know, you always talk as if the crystals 
were alive; and we never understand how much you are 
in play, and how much in earnest. That's the first thing. 

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much 
I am in earnest. The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle 
you. They look as if they were alive, and make me speat 
as if they were ; and I do not in the least know Low much 
truth there is in the appearance. I'm not to ask tbingb 
back again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead 
necessarily to the one main quest'on, which we asked^ 
before, in vain, ' What is it to be alire ?' 

Dora. Yes; but we want to come back to that: foi 
we've been reading scientific books about the ' conservation 
of forces,' and it seems all so grai cl, and wonderful ; and 
the experiments are so pretty; an<l I suppose it must be 
all right : but then the books nev€ r speak as if there wer«» 
any such thing as ' life.' 



THE CRYSTAL EEST. 213 

L. They mostly omit that part of the subject^ certainly, 
Dora ; but they are beautifully right as far as they go ; and 
life is not a convenient element to deal with. They seem to 
have been getting some of it into and out of bottles, in their 
' ozone ' and ' antizone ' lately ; but they still know little of 
it : and, certainly, I know less. 

Dora. You promised not to be provoking, to-night. 

L. Wait a minute.' Though, quite truly, I know less of tho 
secrets of life than the philosophers do ; I yet know one 
corner of ground on which we artists can stand, literally as 
'Life Guards ' at bay, as steadily as the Guards at lukermann ; 
however hard the philosophers push. And you may stand 
with us, if once you learn to draw nicely. 

Dora. I'm sure we are all tiying! but tell us where we 
may stand. 

L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a 
painter, the essential character of anything is the form of it ; 
and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell 
you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or 
calorific energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea- 
kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good ; that is so ; and it is 
very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil 
the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest ; and as much 
more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. 
But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similaritv 



214 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

of the kettle and tlie bird in all scientific respects, attach, 
for our part, our principal interest to the difference in theii 
ibrms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two 
things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; 
the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings ; — not to 
speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philoso- 
phers may properly call merely a form or mode of force ; — 
but then, to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of the 
business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob ; the 
eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not 
the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which 
appears to us the more interesting circumstance; — though 
the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so ! Don't 
laugh, children ; the philosophers have been doing quite 
splendid work lately, in their own way : especially, the trans- 
formation of force into light is a great piece of systematised 
discovery ; and this notion about the sun's being supplied 
with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks 
very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gun 
lock, — flint and steel, — on a large scale : but the order and 
majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and p.iiaters 
care little about it. • It is very fine,' we say, ' and very useful, 
this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eter- 
nal cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, for ever, 
and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of 



THE CEYSTAL EEST. 215 

silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single 
hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, 
hit out the head of the Apollo of ClazomenEe. It is merely a 
matter of form ; but if any of you philosophers, with your 
whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit out such 
another bit of silver as this, — we will take off our hats to 
you. For the present, we keep them on.' 

Mary. Tes, I understand ; and that is nice ; but I don't 
think we shall any of us like having only form to depend upon. 

L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear. 

Mary. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the 
ground. It is that breathing of the life which we want to 
understand. 

L. So you should : but hold fast to the form, and defend 
that first, as distinguished from the mere transition of forces. 
Discei-n the moulding hand of the potter commanding the 
clay, from his merely beating foot, as it turns the wheel. If 
you can find incense, in the vase, afterwards, — well : but it is 
curious how far mere form will carry you ahead of the philo- 
sophers. For instance, with regard to the most interesting 
of all their modes of force — light ; — they never consider how 
tar the existence of it depends on the putting of certain 
vitreous and nervous sttbstances into the formal arrangement 
which we call an eye. The German philosoj^hers began the 
attack, long ago, on the other side, by telHng us, there waf 



216 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

no such tling as light at all, unless we chose to see it : nc w, 
German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and 
insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, 
though nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the 
force must be there, and the eyes there ; and ' light' means 
the effect of the one on the other ; — and perhaps, also — (Plato 
saw farther into that mystery than any one has since, that I 
know of), — on something a little way within the eyes ; but we 
may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the 
philosophers, 

Sibyl. But I don't care so much about defying the philoso- 
phers, if only one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for 
one's self. 

L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that 
cave of yours, than any of us. I was just going to ask you 
about inspiration, and the golden bough, and the like ; only 1 
remembered I was not to ask anything. But, will not you, 
at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the power of 
putting things together, or ' making' them ; and of Death, as 
the power of pushing things separate, or ' unmaking' them, 
may not be very simply held in balance against each other ? 

Sibyl. 'No, 1 am not in my cave to-night ; and cannot tell 
you anything. 

L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great sepa- 
rator ; it is little more than the expansion of Moliere's great 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 211 

sentence, * II s'ensuit de la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est 
dans Ib^ dJctionnaires ; il n'y a que les mots qui sont trans 
poses.' But when you used to be in your cave, Sibyl, and tc 
be inspired, there was (and there remains still in some small 
measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power, 
another, which we painters call 'passion' — I don't know what 
the philosophers call it ; we know it makes people red, or 
white; and therefore it must be something, itself ; and per- 
haps it is the most truly ' poetic ' or ' making ' force of all, 
creating a world of its own out of a glance, or a sigh : and 
the want of passion is perhaps the truest death, or ' unmaking ' 
of everything ; — even of stones. By the way, you were all 
reading about that asvi<?2it of the Aiguille Yerte, the other 
day? 

Sybil. Because you hi^d told us it was so difficult, you 
thought it could not be asovj^nded. 

L. Yes ; I believed the Aiguille Yerte would have held 
its own. But do you recollect what one of the climbers 
exclaimed, when he first felt t^ure of reaching the summit. 

Sybil. Yes, it was, ' Oh, Aiguille Yerte, vous etes morte, 
vous etes morte ! ' 

L. That was true instinct Real philosophic joy. Now 

can you at all fancy the difference between that feeling of 

triumph in a mountain's death ; and the exultatior of youl 

beloved poet, in its life — 

10 



218 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

*Quantiis Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ijse coruscia 
Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali 
Yertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras.' 



Dora. You must translate for us mere house'-keepers, please 
—whatever the cave-keepers may know about it. 

Mart. Will Dry den do ? 

L. No. Dryden is a fiar way worse than nothing, and 
nobody will 'do.' You can't translate it. But this is all 
you need know, that the lines are full of a passionate sense 
of the Apennines' fatherhood, or protecting power over Italy; 
and of sympathy with their joy in their snowy strength in 
heaven ; and with the same joy, shuddering through all the 
leaves of their forests. 

Mary. Yes, that is a difference indeed! but then, you 
know, one can't help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very 
delightful to imagine the mountains to be alive ; but then,— 
are they alive? 

L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings 
of the purest and most mightily passioned human souls are 
likely to be the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to 
know the truth, or blind themselves to it that they may 
please themselves with passion ; for then they are no longer 
pure : but if, continually seeking and accepting the truth as 
far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the integrity 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 219 

of the instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in tlie 
sense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I 
think they will be most in the right, so. 

Doha and Jessie (dapping their hands). Then wo really 
may believe that the mountains are living ? 

L. Tou may at least earnestly believe, that the presence 
of the spii'it wiiich culminates in your own life, sliows itself 
in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to 
assume any orderly and lovely state. You will find it imnos- 
sible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation from 
that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or 
wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, 
most easily examined instance — the life of a flower. N"otice 
what a different degree and kind of life there is in the calyx 
and the corolla. The calyx is nothing but the swaddling 
clothes of the flower ; the child-blossom is bound up in it, 
hand and foot ; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the 
time of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to 
the germ in the eg^^ than the calyx to the blossom. It 
bursts at last ; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may 
fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or 
"wither gradually, as in the buttercup ; or persist in a ligneoua 
apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose ; or harmonise 
itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the 
lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright passioii 



220 THE CEYiTAIi REST. 

of life. And the gradations which thus exist between the 
different members of organic creatures, exist no less bO' 
tween the different ranges of organism. "We know no highel 
or more energetic life than our own; but there seems to 
me this great good in the idea of gradation of life — it 
admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, 
as much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the 
dust. 

Makt. 1 am glad you have said that ; for I know Violet 
and Lucilla and May want to ask you something; indeed, 
we all do; only you frightened Violet so about the ant- 
hill, that she can't say a word ; and May is afraid of your 
teasing her, too: but I know they are wondering why you are 
always telling them about heathen gods and goddesses, as 
if you half believed in them ; and you represent them as 
good; and then w^e see there is really a kind of truth in 
the stories about them ; and we are all puzzled : and, in this, 
we cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to ourselves; — 
it would be such a long confused question, if we could ask 
you all we should like to know. 

L. ISTor is it any wonder, Mary ; for this is indeed the long- 
est, and the most wildly confused question that reason can 
deal with ; but I will try to give y 3u, quickly, a few cleaf 
ideas about the heathen gods, which you may follow out after- 
wards, as your knowledge increavses 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 221 

Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely 
to be interested, has three distinct characters : — 

I. It has a physical character. It represents some of tho 
great powers or objects of nature — sun or moon, or heaven, 
or the winds, or the sea. And the fables first related about 
each deity represent, figuratively, the action of the natural 
power which it represents ; such as the rising and setting of 
the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on. 

II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its histor}', 
the moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first, 
physically, the sun contending with darkness ; but morally, 
the power of divine life contending with corruption. Athe- 
na is, physically, the air ; morally, the breathing of the 
divine cmrit of wisdom. lN"eptune is, physically, the sea; 
morally, .he supreme power of agitating passion ; and so on. 

III. It ha*'', at last, a personal character ; and is realised in 
the minds of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom 
men may cpeak face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. 

Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any 
period of a national religion, these three ideas are mingled ; 
or how far one prevails over the other. Each enqnirei 
usually takes up one of these ideas, and pursues it, to tho 
exclusion of the others : no impartial effort seems to have 
been made to discern the real state of the heathen imagina- 
tion in its successive phases. For the question is not at all 



222 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

what a mytliological figure meant in its origin ; but what i\ 
became in each subsequent mental development of thft nation 
inlieriting the thought. Exactly in proportion to the mental 
and moral insight of any race, its mythological figures mean 
more to it, and become more real. An early and savage race 
means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) 
by its Apollo, than the sun ; while a cultivated Greek means 
every operation of divine intellect and justice. The l^eith, 
of Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of 
the air; but the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm hnd 
calm, represented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the 
serpents of her a3gis ; and the lightning and cold of the 
highest thunder- clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield : while 
morally, the same types represented to him the mystery and 
changeful terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its rul- 
ing and defensive power. And no study can be more inte- 
resting, or more useful to you, than that of the different 
meanings which have been created by great nations, and 
great poets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, 
in utter simplicity. But when we approach them in their 
third, or personal, character (and, for its power over the 
whole national mind, this is far the leading one), we are met 
at once by questions which may well put all of you at pause. 
Were they idly imagined to be real beings ? and did they so 
usurp the place of the true God ? Or were they actual]} 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 223 

real beings, — evil spirits, — ^leading men away from the true 
God ? Or is it conceivable that they might have been real 
beings, — good spirits, — entrusted with some message from 
the true God ? These were the questions you wanted to ask j 
were they not, Lucilla ? 

LuciLLA. Yes, indeed. 

L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the 
clearness of your faith in the personality of the spirits which 
are described in the book of your own religion ; — their per- 
sonality, observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical 
visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the 
seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this 
which he sees is not a real thing ; but merely a significant 
dream. Also, Avhen Zechariah sees the speckled horses among 
the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the 
vision symbolical ; — you do not think of them as real spirits, 
like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are 
told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of 
personality begins to force itself upon you. And though you 
might, in a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) 
the fourth rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol of the 
power of death, — in your stronger and more earnest moods 
you will rather conceive of him as a real and living angel. 
And when you look back from the vision of the Apocalypse 
to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born, 



224 THE CRYSTAL EEST. 

and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David's \isioH 
at the threshing floor of Araiinah, the idea of personality m 
this death-angel becomes entirely defined, just as in the 
appearance of the angels to Abraham, Manoah, or Mary. 

Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a 
personal spirit, must not the question instantly foJlow: 'Does 
this spirit exercise its functions towards one race of men 
only, or towards all men ? Was it an angel of death to the 
Jew only, or to the Gentile also ?' You find a certain Divine 
agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed angel, 
executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to 
lower his kingly pride. You find another (or perhaps the 
same) agency, made visible to a Christian prophet as an 
angel standing in the sun, calling to the birds that fly under 
heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh of kings. la 
there anything impious in the thought that the same agency 
might have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, 
by similar visions ? — that this figure, standing in the sun, and 
armed with the sword, or the bow (whose aiTows were 
drank with blood), and exercising especially its power in the 
humiliation of the proud, might, at first, have been called 
only 'Destroyer,' and afterwards, as the light, or sun, of 
justice, was recognised in the chastisement, called also 'Phy- 
sician ' or ' Healer ? ' If you feel hesitation in admitting the 
possibility of such a manifestation, I believe you will find i) 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 225 

is caused, partly indeed by such trivial things as the differ 
ence to your ear between Greek and English terms ; but, fai 
more, by uncertainty in your own mind respecting the nature 
and truth of the visions spoken of in the Bible. Have any 
of you intently examined the nature of your belief in them ? 
You, for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of 
such things ? 

Lucilla. IsTo ; I never could tell what to believe about 
them. I know they must be true in some way or other ; and 
I like reading about them. 

L. Yes ; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla ; as I 
like reading other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both 
to do more than like it? Will God be satisfied with as, 
think you, if we read His words, merely for the sake of an 
entirely meaningless poetical sensation ? 

Lucilla. But do not the people who give themselves to 
seek out the meauing of these things, often get very strange, 
and extravagant ? 

L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That 
abandonment of the mind to religious theory, or contem- 
plation, is the very thing I have been pleading with you 
agamst. I never said you should set yourself to discover the 
meanings ; but you should take careful pains to understand 
them, so far as they are clear; and you should always accu 

rately aftcertaiu the state of yom- mind about them. I waul 

10* 



226 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

yon never to read merely for the pleasure of fancy ; still less 
as a formal religious duty (else you might as well taks to 
repeating Paters at once ; for it is surely wiser to repeat one 
thing we understand, than read a thousand which we can- 
not). Either, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, foi 
the present, unintelligible to you ; or else determine the sense 
in which you at present receive them ; or, at all events, the 
different senses between which you clearly see that you must 
choose. Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite ; 
but do not go on, all through your life, believing nothing 
intelligently, and yet supposing that your having read the 
words of a divine book must give you the right to despise 
every religion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may 
seem, our scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our 
belief, but our disbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as 
yet, no sufficient clue to the meaning of either ; but you will 
always find that, in proportion to the earnestness of our own 
faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual personality increases : 
and that the most vital and beautiful Christian temper rests 
joyfully in its conviction of the multitudinous ministry of 
living angels, infinitely varied in rank and power. You all 
know one expression of the purest and happiest form of such 
faith, as it exists in modern times, in Richter's lovely 
illustrations of the Lord's Prayer. The real and living 
death-angel, girt as a pilgrim for journey, and softly "^^Awn 



i 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 22^ 

ed with flowers, beckons at the dying mother's door; child- 
angels sit talking face to face with mortal children, among 
the flowers ; — hold them by their little coats, lest they fall or? 
the stairs ; — whisper dreams of heaven to them, leaning over 
their pillows ; carry the sound of the chm'ch bells for them far 
through the air; and even descending lower in service, fill 
little cups with honey, to hold out to the weary bee. By the 
way, Lily, did you tell the other children that story about 
your little sister, and Alice, and the sea ? 

Lily. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don't think I 
did to anybody else. I thought it wasn't worth. 

L. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you 
will tell it us. How old is Dotty, again ? I forget. 

Lily. She is not quite three ; but she has such odd little 
old ways, sometimes. 

L. And she was very fond of Alice ? 

Lily. Yes ; Alice was so good to her ahvays ! 

L. Abd so when Alice went away ? 

Lily. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell a.bout ; only it 
was strange at the time. 

L. Well ; but I w^ant you to tell it. 

Lily. The morning after Alice had gone. Dotty was very 
Bad and restless when she got up ; and went about, looking 
uito all the corners, as if she could find Alice in them, and at 
last she came to me, and said, ' Is Alie gone ove*" the great 



228 THE CKTSTAL BEST. 

sea ? ' And I said, ' Yes, she is gone over the great, deep 
sea, but she will come back again some day. ' Then Dotty 
looked round the room ; and I had just poured some water 
out into the basin; and Dotty ran to it, and got up on a 
chair, and dashed her hands through the water, again and 
again ; and cried, ' Oh, deep, deep sea ! send httle Alie back 
to me.' 

L. Isn't that pretty, children? There's a dear little hea 
then for you! The whole heart of Greek mythology is in 
that ; the idea of a personal being in the elemental power ; — 
of its being moved by prayer ; — and of its j)resence every- 
where, making the broken diffusion of the element sacred. 

Now, remember, the measure in which we may permit 
ourselves to think of this trusted and adored personality, in 
Greek, oi in my other, mythology, as conceivably a shadow 
of truth, ''vil. depend on the degree in which we hold the 
Greeks, oi other great nations, equal, or inferior, in privilege 
and character, to the Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe that 
the great Father would use the imagination of the Jew as 
an instrument by which to exalt and lead him; but the imagi- 
nation of the Greek only to degrade and mislead him : if wo 
can suppose that real angels were sent to minister to the 
Jews and t" punish them; but no angels, or only mocking 
spectra of r-ngels, or even devils in the shapes of angels, to 
lead Lycurgus and Leonidas fi*om desolate cradle to hopeless 



THE CEYSTAI. KEST. 229 

grave : — ^and if we can think that it was only the influenct 
of spectres, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the 
making of mothers hke Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobia 
atdBito, we may, of conrse, reject the heathen Mythology in 
onr privileged scorn : but, at least, we are bound to examine 
strictly by what faults of our own it has come to pass, that 
the ministry of real angels among ourselves is occasionally 
so ineffectual, as to end in the production of Cornelias who 
entrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors for the better 
keei^ing of them ; and of sons like that one who, the other 
day, in France, beat his mother to death with a stick ; and 
was brought in by the jury, 'guilty, with extenuating circum- 
stances.' 

Mat. Was that really possible ? 

L. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can lay my hand 
on the reference to it (and I should not have said ' the other 
day' — it was a year or two ago), but you may depend on the 
fjict ; and I could give you many like it, if I chose. There 
was a murder done in Russia, very lately, on a traveller. 
The murderess's little daughter was in the way, and found 
it out, somehow. Her mother killed her, too, and put her 
into the oven. There is a peculiar horror about the relations 
betw(^en parent and child, which are being now brouglit 
about by our variously degraded forms of European white 
slavery. Here is one i-eference, I «ee, in my notes on thai 



230 THE CRYSTAL KEST. 

Story of Cleobis and Bito ; though I suppose I marked this 
chiefly for its quaintness, and the beautifully Christian names 
of the sons ; but it is a good instance of the power of the 
King of the Yalley of Diamonds* among us. 

In ' Galignani' of July 21-22, 1862, is reported a trial of a 
farmer's son in the department of the Yonne. The father, 
two years ago, at Malay le Grand, gave up his property to 
his two sons, on condition of being maintained by them 
Simon fulfilled his agreement, but Pierre would not. The 
tribunal of Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four francs a 
year to his father. Pierre replies, ' he would rather die than 
pay it.' Actually, returning home, he throws himself into 
the river, and the body is not found till next day. 

MASfci. But — ^but — I can't tell what you would have us 
think. I>o you seriously mean that the Greeks were better 
than we are ; and that their gods were real angels ? 

L. ]N'o, my dear. I mean only that we know, in reality, 
less than noti'iing of the dealings of our Maker with our 
fellow-men; an J can only reason or conjecture safely about 
them, w^hen we have smcerely humble thoughts of ourselves 
and our creeds. 

We owe to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature ; 
every radical principle of art; and every tnrrn of convenient 
beauty in our household furniture and daily o».'cupations oi 

* Note VI. 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 231 

life. We arc unable, ourselves, to make rational use of half 
that we have received from them : and, of our own, we have 
nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical adap- 
tations of the discovered physical powers. On the other 
hand, the vice existing among certain classes, both of the 
rich and poor, in London, Paris, and Vienna, could have been 
conceived by a Spartan or Roman of the heroic ages only as 
possible in a Tartarus, where fiends were employed to t<3ach, 
but not to punish, crime. It little becomes us to speak con- 
temptuously of the religion of races to whom we stand in 
such relations; nor do I think any man of modesty or 
thoughtfulness will ever speak so of any religion, in which 
God has allowed one good man to die, trusting. 

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own che- 
rished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital 
and helpful whatever is right in them will become : and no 
error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not 
allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do 
so. There may be doubt of the meaning of other visions, 
but there is none respecting that of the dream of St. Peter ; 
and you may trust the Rock of the Church's Foundation for 
true interpreting, when he learned from it that, ' in every 
nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is 
accepted with Him.' See that you understand what that 
righteousness means ; and set hand to it stoutly ; you will 



232 THE CRYSTAL EEST. 

always measure your neighbours' creed kindly, in proportion 
to the substantial fruits of your owu. Do not think you wil^ 
ever get harm by striving to enter into the faith of others, 
aufJ to sympathise, in imagination, with the guiding' princt 
pies of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or pit} 
them, or praise. By the gracious effort you will double, tre- 
ble — nay, indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the 
reverence, and the intelligence with which you read: and, 
believe me, it is Vt^iser and holier, by the fire of your own 
faith to kindle the ashes of expired religions, than to let your 
soul siiiver and stumble among their graves, through the 
gathering darkness, and communicable cold. 

Maky {after some pause). We shall all like reading Greek 
history so much better after this ! but it has put everything 
else out of our heads that we wanted to ask. 

L. I can tell you one of the things ; and I might take 
credit for generosity in telling you ; but I have a personal 
reason — Lucilla's verse about the creation. 

Dora. Oh, yes — yes; and its 'pain together, until 
now.' 

L. I call you back to that, because I must warn you 
against an old error of my own. Somewhere in the fourth 
volume of ' Modern Painters,' T said that the earth seemed 
to have passed through its highest state : and that, after 
ascending by a series of phases, culmniating in its habitation 



THE CRYSTAL REST. 233 

by man, it seems to be now gradually becoming less fit for 
that habitation. 

Mart. Yes, I remember. 

L. I ^A^rote those passages under a very bitter impression 
of the gradual perishing of beauty from the loveliest scenes 
which I knew in the physical world ; — not in any doubtful 
way, such as I might have attributed to loss of sensation in 
myself— but by violent and definite physical action ; such as 
the filling up of the Lac de Chede by landslips from the 
Rochers des Fiz ; — the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by 
the gaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, 
in the course of years, will cut the lake into two, as that of 
Brientz has been divided from that of Thun ; — the steady 
diminishing of the glaciers north of the Alps, and still more, 
of the sheets of snow on their southern slopes, which supply 
the refreshing streams of Lombardy : — the equally steady 
increase of deadly maremma round Pisa and Venice ; and 
other such phenomena, quite measurably traceable within 
the limits even of short life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, 
by redeeming or compensatory agencies. I am still under 
tlie same impression respecting the existing phenomena ; but 
] feel more strongly, every day, that no evidence to be col- 
lected within historical periods can be accepted as any cluc^ 
to the great tendencies of geological change ; but that the 
great laws which never fail, and to which all change is sub 



234 THE CEYSTAI. REST. 

ordinate, appear such as to accomplish a gradual advance to 
lovelier order, and more calmly, yet more deeply, animated 
Rest. JSTor has this conviction ever fastened itself upon me 
more distinctly, than during my endeavour to trace the laws 
which govern the lowly framework of the dust. For, 
through all the phases of its transition and dissolution, there 
seems to be a continual effort to raise itself into a higher 
state ; and a measm^ed gain, through the fierce revulsion and 
slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty, and order, and 
permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw 
themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered 
symmetry; burdened and strained under increase of pressure, 
they pass into a nascent marble ; scorched by fervent heat, 
they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and 
Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant 
slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as it 
dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying 
each by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the 
/nass in which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing 
drought, till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses con- 
tinually a finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its 
weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent at 
last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in 
lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a 
perennial endurance ; and, during countless subsequent cen 



THE CETSTAL REST. 235 

lories, declining, or, rather let me say, rising, to repose, 
finishes the infallible lustre of its crystalline beauty, under 
harmonies of law which are wholly beneScent, because wholly 
inexorable. 

(The children seem pleased^ hut more inclined to thi7ik 
over these matters than to talk.) 

L. {after giving them a little time.) Mary, I seldom ask you 
to read anything out of books of mine ; but there is a passage 
about the Law of Help, which I want you to read to the 
children now, because it is of no use merely to put it in other 
words for them. You know the place I mean, do not you ? 

Mahy. Yes {presently finding it) ; where shall I begin ? • 

L. Here ; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at 
the piece which comes just before this. 

Mary {reads) : 

* A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are 
helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and 
the other name of life, is therefore, " help." The other name of death 
is " separation." G-overnment and co-operation are in all things, and 
eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in 
all things, the laws of death. 

' Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take 
of the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible 
changes in the dust we tread on. 

* Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute 
type of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, over-rroddec 



236 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of 
the road, because that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely 
an ounce or two of the blackest shme of a beaten footpath, on a ramy 
day J near a manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in mosl 
cases composed of clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with 
goot, a httle sand and water. All these elements are at helpless wai 
with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other's nature and 
power : competing and fighting for place at every tread of your foot; 
sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot 
meddling everywhere, and defihng the whole. Let us suppose that 
this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather 
together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest rela- 
tions possible. 

Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it 
gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with 
help of congeahng fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and p linted 
on, and be kept in kings' palaces. But such artificial consistence ia 
not its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, 
and it becomes, not only white but clear ; not only clear, but hard ; 
nor only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with hght in 
a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, 
refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. 

' Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar perm' - 
sion of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth ; then 
proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in myste- 
rious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, 
not merely the blue rayg, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in 



THE CRYSTAIi KEST. 237 

the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through acy hard 
material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. 

' In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at 
first ; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder ; and 
comes out clear at last ; and the hardest thing in the world : and for the 
blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all 
the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid thing 
c&n shoot. We call it then a diamond. 

* Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; contented enough 
tf it only reach the form of a dewdrop : but, if we insist on its 
proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallises into the shape 
of a star. And, for the ounce of slime which we had by political 
economy of competition, we have, by political economy of co- opera- 
tion, a sappnire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star oi 
Bnow.' 

L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, fron^ 
all that we have seen in the work and play of these fast 
days, I would have you gain at least one grave and endur- 
ing thought. The seeming trouble, — the unqaestionable 
degradation, — of the elements of the physical earth, must 
passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their 
restoration. It can only be brought about for them by the 
ugency of external law. But if, indeed, there be a noble' 
life in us than in these strangely moving atoms; — ^if, indeed, 
there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits 
them, and that which animates us, — it must be shown, by 



288 THE CRYSTAL REST. 

each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patiencej 
but in the activity of our hope ; not merely by our desire, 
but our labour, for the time when the Dust of the gene- 
rations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the 
gates of the city of God. The human clay, now trampled 
and despised, will not be, — cannot be, — ^knit into strength 
and light by accident or ordinances of unassisted fate. By 
human cruelty and iniquity it has been afflicted; — ^by human 
mercy and justice it must be raised: and, in all fear or 
questioning of what is or is not, the real message of 
creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect 
peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has 
plainly required, — and content that He should indeed require 
no more of you, — than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and 
fco walk humbly with Ilim- 



MO TM8. 



NOTES 



Note I. 

Page 35. 

* That third pyramid of hera.* 

Throughout the dialogues, it must be observed that ' Sibyl ' is address- 
ed (when in play) as having once been the Cumsean Sibyl; and 

' Egypt ' as having been queen Nitocris, —the Cinderella, and ' the 
greatest heroine and beauty ' of Egyptian story. The Egyptians call- 
ed her * ISTeith the Victorious ' (Nitocris), and the Greeks ' Face of the 
Rose' (Rhodope). Chaucer's beautiful conception of Cleopatra in 
the ' Legend of Good Women,' is much more founded on the tradi- 
tions of her than on those of Cleopatra; and, especially in its close, 
modified by Herodotus's terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, 
however, is mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep 
monotonous ancient dirge for the fulfilment of the eartlily destiny of 
Beauty; 'She cast herself into a chamber full of ashes.' 

I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either 
built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of 
Gizeh : and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary 
endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out 
the description of that pyramid in the lG7th page of the second vol- 
ume of Bunsen's ' Egypt's Place in Universal History' — ideal endea- 
vour, — ^which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real endea- 

U 



242 NOTES. 

vours to the same end always have terminated. There are, however, 
valuable notes respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same vohime : 
but the ' Early Egyptian History for the Young,' by the author of 
Sidney Gray, contains, in a pleasant form, as much information as 
young readers will usually need. 

Note II. 

Page 37. 

' Pyramid of AsycMs.^ 

This pyramid, .in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the 
shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great 
edifices, built with * brick for stone.' This was the inscription on it, 
according to Herodotus: — 

* Despise me not, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone ; for 
I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter ha,i pre- 
eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into the 
pool, men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the staff, 
and kneaded bricks O'jt of it, and so made me.' 

The word I have translated * kneaded ' is literally ' drew ;' in the sense 
of drawing, for which the Latins used ' duco ;' and thus gave as our 
* ductile' in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in 
speaking of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice 
is made, in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of laivour 
consumed in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, af 
once, of the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages , so fai 
fit least as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with it: 
but Neith, exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the w >rb 
of wise and in ?pired builders. 



KOTES. 243 

Note III. 

Page 38. 

' The Greater Pthdh: 

It is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal 
agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in 
function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each otlier in 
mysterious triads ; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena 
with real spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this 
in the text of the tenth Lecture : here, it is only necessary for the 
reader to know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the 
formative power of order and measurement : he always stands on a 
four-square pedestal, * the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the 
hieroglyphic for truth ;' his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed 
stability, as of a pillar ; he has a measuring-rod in his hand ; and at 
Philse, is represented as holding an q^q on a potter's wheel ; but I do 
not know if this symbol occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is 
the 'Lord of Truth.' Others, very beautiful: 'King of the Two 
Worlds, of Gracious Countenance,' 'Superintendent of the Great 
Abode,' &c., are given by Mr. Birch in Arundale's * Gallery of Anti- 
quities,' which I suppose is the book of best authority easily accessible. 
For the full titles and utterances of the gods, Roselhni is as yet the only 
— and I believe, still a very questionable — authority ; and Arundale's 
little book, excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its draw- 
ings give the statues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character. 
Rsaders who have not access to the originals must be warned against 
this frequent fault in modern illustration (especially existing also in 
some of the painted casts of Gothic and Korman work at the Crystal 
Palace). It is not owing to any wilful want of veracity: the plate* 



244 NOTES. 

in Anindale's book are laboriously faithful : but the expressions ol 
both face and body in a figure depend merely on emphasis of touch- 
and, in barbaric art, most draughtsmen emphasise what they plainly se? 
—the barbarism; and mi-s conditions of nobleness, which they murW 
approach the monument in a different temper before they will discover 
and draw with great subtlety before they can express. 

The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, 
of Pthah in his lower office, is sufl&ciently explained in the text of the 
tnird Lecture; only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian 
symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one ; it expressed 
only the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may 
not unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his 
power in new development; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive 
that the Egyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of 
him (ChampoUion, ' Pantheon,' pi. 12), without some occult scorn. 
It is the most painful of all their types of any beneficent power ; and 
even among those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, 
except its opposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence. 

Pasht (p. 36, line 19) is connected with the G-reek Artemis, especially 
in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness- 
headed ; sometimes cat-headed ; her attributes seeming often trivial or 
ludicrous unless their full meaning is known ; but the enquiry is much 
too wide to be followed here. The cat was sacred to her ; or rather 
to the sun, and secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text 
because she is always the companion of Pthah (called * the beloved ol 
Pthah,' it may be as Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth) ; 
end it maybe well for young readers to have this fixed in their minds, 
even by chance association. There are more statues of Pasht in the 
British Museum than of any other Egyptian deity ; several of them 
fine in workmanship ; nearly all in dark stone, wliich may be, pre 



NOTES. 245 

jumablj, to connect her, as the moon, with the night; and in hei 
office of avenger, with grief! 

Thoth (p. 40, line 18), is the Recording Angel of Judgment , and the 
Greek Hermes Phre (line 21), is the Sun. 

Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom ; and the Athena 
of the Greeks. ]^o sufficient statement of her many attributes, still 
less of their meanings, can be shortly given ; but this should be 
noted respecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by 
vulture wings — that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air, this 
bird, the most powerful creature of the air known to the Egyp- 
tians, naturally became her symbol. It had other sig-nifications ; 
but certainly this, when in connection with Neith. As represent- 
ing her, it was the most important sign, next to the winged sphere, 
in Egyptian sculpture ; and, just as in Homer, Athena herself 
guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of wisdom, giving victory, 
floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The Greeks, repre- 
senting the goddess herself in human form, yet would not lose the 
power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of 
victory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse 
and Leontium, it gradually became the received sign of all con- 
quest, and the so-called * Victory ' of later times ; which, httle by 
little, loses its truth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a 
personification of victory itself, — not as an actual picture of the 
living Angel who led to victory. There is a wide difference between 
these two conceptions, — all the difference between insincere poetry, 
and sincere religion. This I have also endeavoured farther to illustrate 
in the tenth Lecture ; there is however one part of Athena's character 
which it would have been irrelevant to dwell upon there ; yet which 
I must not wholly leave unnoticed. 

As the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its 



246 NOTES. 

beneficent calm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as 
Chrysaor and iEolus) being invested with a subordinate and more or 
less malignant function, which is exclusively their ovsrn, and is related 
to that of Athena as the power of Mars is related to hers in war. So 
also Yirgil makes her able to wield the lightning herself, while Juno 
cannot, but must pray for the intervention of ^olus. She hag 
precisely the correspondent moral authority over calmness of mind, 
and just anger. She soothes Achilles, as she incites Tydides; her 
physical power over the air being always hinted correlatively. She 
grasps Achilles by his hair — as the wind would lift it — softly, 

' It fanned his cheek, it raised his hair, 
Like a meadow gale in spring." 

She does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed ; but seizes 
it in both her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of making it vain, 
like chaff in the wind ; — to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own 
voice of storm in heaven — but in all cases the moral power is still the 
principal one — most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, 
which was the talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the 
Sperchius if he returned in safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus' 
tomb, he, knowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and 
signifies that he will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, 
above all other heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing 
characters are the desire of justice, united in both, with deep affec- 
tions ; and, in Achilles, with a passionate tenderness, which is the real 
root of his passionate anger. Ulysses is her favouiite chiefly in her 
office as the goddess of conduct and design. 



NOTES. 247 

KOTE IV. 

Page 86. 

* Geometrical limitations.'' 

fr is difficult, without a tedious accuracy, or witbouj lull illuscratioa 
to express the complete relations of crystalline structure, which 
dispose minerals to take, at differen: times, fibrous, massive, or fohated 
forms ; and I am afraid this chapter will be generally skipped by the 
reader: yet the arrangement itself will be found useful, if kept 
broadly in mind; and the transitions of state are of the highest 
interest, if the subject is entered upon with any earnestness. It 
would have been vain to add to the scheme of this little volume any 
account of the geometrical forms of crystals: an available one, though 
still far too difficult and too copious, has been arranged by the Rev. 
Mr. Mitchell, for Orr's * Circle of the Sciences ' ; and, I believe, the 
* nets ' of crystals, which are therein given to be cut out with scissors 
and put prettily together, wiU be found more conquerable by young 
ladies than by other students. They should also, when an oppor- 
tunity occurs, be shown, at any public library, the diagram of the 
crystallisation of quartz referred to poles, at p. 8 of Cloizaux's * Manuel 
de Mineralogie ' : that ilyQj may know what work is ; and what the 
subject is. 

With a Tiew to more careful examination of the nascent states of 
silica, I have made no allusion in this volume to the influence of mere 
segregation^ a3 connected witk the crystalline power. It has only 
been recently, during the study of the breccias alluded to in page 190, 
that I have fully seen the extent to which this singular force often 
modifies rocks in which at first its influence might hardly have been- 
Buspected; many apparent conglomerates being in reality formed 



248 NOTES. 

chiefly by segregation, combined with mysterious brokenly -zoned struc- 
tures, like those of some malachites. I hope some day to know more 
of these and several other mineral phenomena (especially of those 
connected with the relative sizes of crystals), which otherwise I should 
have endeavoured to describe in this volume. 

Note V. 

Page 171. 

' St Barbara: 

I WOULD have given the legends of St. Barbara, and St. Thomas, if 1 
had thought it always well for young readers to have everything at 
once told them which they may wish to know. They will remember 
the stories better after taking some trouble to find them ; and the text 
is intelligible enough as it stands. The idea of St. Barbara, as there 
given, is founded partly on her legend in Peter de Natalibus, partly 
on the beautiful photograph of Yan Eyck's picture of her Sit Antwerp : 
which was some time since published at Lille. 

Note VI. 

Page 230. 

* King of the Valley o/DiamondsJ 

Isabel interrupted the Lecturer here, and was briefly bid to bold her 
tongue ; which gave rise to some talk, apart, afterwards, between L. 
and Sibyl, of which a word or two may be perhaps advisably set 
down. 

Sibyl. We shall spoil Isabel, certainly, if we don't mind : I was 
glad you stopped her, and yet sorry ; for she wanted so much to ask 
about the Yalley of Diamonds again, and she has worked go bard a) 



NOTES. 249 

it, and made it nearly all out by herself She recollected Elisha'3 
throwing in the meal, which nobody else did. 

L. But what did she want to ask ? 

Sibyl. About the mulberry trees and the serpents; we ars aU 
Stopped by that Won't you tell us what it means ? 

L. Now, Sibyl, I am sure you, who never explained yourself 
should be the last to expect others to do so. I hate explaining 
myself 

Sibyl. And yet how often you complain of other people for not 
saying what they meant How I have heard you growl over the 
three stone steps to purgatory ; for instance I 

L. Yes; because Dante's meaning is worth getting at; but mine 
matters nothing : at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence, I 
speak it as clearly as may be. But you may make anything you like 
of the serpent forests. I could have helped you to find out what they 
were, by giving a little more detail, but it would have been tiresome. 

Sibyl, It is much more tiresome not to find out Tell us, please, 
as Isabel says, because we feel so stupid. 

L. There is no stupidity ; you could not possibly do more than 
guess at anything so vague. But I think, you, Sibyl, at least, might 
have recollected what first dyed the mulberry ? 

Sibyl, So I did; but that helped Utile; I thought of Dante's 
forest of suicides, too, but you would not simply have borrowed that? 

L. No. If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it, to 
beat into tnother shape ; not borrowed it. But that idea of souls in 
trees is as old as the world ; or at least, as the world of man. And I 
did mean that there were souls in those dark branches ; — the souls of 
all those who had perished in misery through the pursuit of riches ^ 
and that the river was of their blood, gathermg gradually, and flowing 
out of the valley. Then I meant the serpents for the souls of thos<» 

11* 



250 NOTES. 

who had lived carelessly aud wantonly in their riches; and 77i\o i ave 
all their sins forgiven by the world, l)ecause they are rich: and there- 
fore they have seven crimson-crested heads, for the seven mortal sins ; 
of which they are proud: and these, and the memory and report of 
them^ are the chief causes of temptation to others, as showing the 
pleasantness and absolving power of riches ; so that thus they are 
singing serpents. And the worms are the souls of the common 
money-getters and traflS.ckers, who do nothing but eat and spin : and 
who gain habitually by the distress or foolishness of others (as you 
see the butchers have been gaining out of the panic at the cattle 
plague, among the poor), — so they are made to eat the dark leaves, 
and spin, and perish. 

Sibyl. And the souls of the great, cruel, rich people who oppress 
the poor, and lend money to government to make unjust war, where 
are they ? 

L. They change into the ice, I believe, and are knit with the gold ; 
and make the grave-dust of the valley. I believe so, at least, for no 
one ever sees those souls anywhere. 

(Sibyl ceases questioning.) 

Isabel (wJio has crept up to her side without any one^s seeingi). Oh, 
Sibyl, please ask him about the fireflies ! 

L. What, you there, mousie ! No ; I won't tell either Sibyl or you 
about the fireflies; nor a word more about anything else. You 
ought to be little fireflies yourselves, and find your way in twilight by 
your own wits. 

Isabel. But you said they burned, you know? 

L. Yes; and you may be fireflies that way too, some of you, 
before long, though I did not mean that. Away with you, children 
You have thought enough for to-day. 



NOTES. 261 



XOTB TO SECOND EDITION. 

Sentence out of letter from May, (who is staying with Isabel just now 
a\, Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877 :— 

' ' I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, 
and she's just as puzzled as I've always been about the fire-flies, and we 
both want to know so much. — Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and 
tell us, won't you ? " 

Well, May, you never were a vain girl ; so could scarcely guess that 
I meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us, 
confused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, 
the fire-flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind, — the stars them- 
selves no brighter, imi all their host seeming, at moments, to fado £§ 
tli6 insects fad&d. 



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